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THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 




THE DAUPHIN (lOUIS XVII) 
From apaintiusby Kocharskiat rersailk^ 



THE 
LITTLE DAUPHIN 



By 



CATHARINE WELCH 



WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1908 






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PREFACE 

TN writing this book I have received help and 
advice from several persons. I wish particu- 
larly to express my indebtedness to Mr. Richard 
Whiteing, to M. Parizet, and to M. and Madame 
Dispan, to Mr. W. Shaw Sparrow, to Mr. 
H. A. L. Fisher, to M. Foulon de Vaulx, who 
has permitted me to reproduce a portrait in his 
possession, to Lady Ritchie, who has permitted 
me to reproduce a picture formerly owned by 
W. M. Thackeray, and to my father, who has 
helped me in many ways. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 


A PRINCE IS BORN A REVOLUTION BEGINS 


PAGE 
I 


II. 


A HAPPY CHILD 


• 15 


III. 


THE LAST OF VERSAILLES 


. 28 


IV. 


TWENTY MONTHS AT THE TUILERIES 


41 


V. 


FLIGHT TO VARENNES .... 


• 57 


VI. 


A LAST YEAR OF FREEDOM 


83 


VII. 


THE FIFTY DAYS 


102 


VIII. 


THE TEMPLE 


122 


IX. 


JANUARY 2 1, 1793 .... 


144 


X. 


A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS . 


166 


XI. 


THAT ENIGMA SIMON .... 


191 


XII. 


THE ORPHAN 


210 


XIII. 


SIX MONTHS OF SILENCE . . . . 


221 


XIV. 


DEATH 


228 


XV. 


BUT DID HE DIE ? 


246 


XVI. 


THE FORTY DAUPHINS 


268 


XVII. 


THE FORTY DAUPHINS {continued) . 


298 


KVIII. 


THE SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD . 


316 




INDEX 


341 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Le Dauphin (Louis XVII.) .... Frontispiece 

From a painting by KoCHARSKi at Versailles. From a 
photograph by W. A, Manskll & Co. 

Facing page 

Marie-Antoinette. . . . . . • i ' 

From a portrait by Callet at Versailles. From a photo- 
graph by W. A. Mansell & Co. 

Louis XVI i6 - 

From a painting by Callet at Versailles. From a photo- 
graph by NeURDEIN FRfcRES. 

Marie- Antoinette and her Children . . . 28 ' 

From a painting by Madame Vigee Lebrun at Versailles. 
From a photograph by W. A, Mansell & Co. 

Louis XVI. stopped in his Flight to Varennes . 72 ' 

From an engraving by MARIANO BovL 

A Contemporary Caricature . . . . 84 • 
The Taking of the Tuileries, August 10, 1792 120 

From a painting by Bertaux at Versailles. From a 
photograph by Newrdein frS^RES. 

The Temple 126 

From an engraving in the Carnavalet Museum. 

The Last Farewell of Louis XVI. and his 

Family 162 ^ 

From an engraving by Stlanio after the painting by 
Benazech, 



X THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Facing page , 

The Execution of Louis XVI 164 

From an eftgraving by SiLANiO after the painting by 
Benazech. 

Louis XVI I. , King of France and Navarre . 170 

From an engraving by N. Heideloff. 

The Dauphin torn from his Mother's Arms . 192^ 

From an engraving by Mariano Bovi. 

Simon 210 

From a sketch by Gabriel in the Carnavalet Museum. 

Thackeray's Mysterious Portrait . . .240 

In the possession of Lady Ritchie. 

Eleazar Williams, the Iroquois Chief and Self- 
styled Dauphin . . . . . . 286 ' 

From a contemporarv engraving. 

Naundorff (soi-disant Louis XVII.) . . .294 

After an unpublished portrait by CLAYTON in the possessioft 

of M. FOULON DE VAULX. 



A list of a few of the most important and interesting of the 
many books on the subject of the Dauphin^ s possible escape 
from the Temple and on the Pretenders. 

Barbey, Frederic, A Friend of Marie-Antoinette. 
Beaucamp, Alphonse de, Histoire des deux Faux Dauphins 

(Hervegault and Bruneau). 
Blanc, J. J. L., Histoire de la Revolution Frangaise. Vol. xii. 

p. 323, fol- 
Cabanes, Auguste, Les Morts Mysterieuses de I'Histoire 

(Louis XVII.). 
Hanson, J. H., The Lost Prince (Eleazar Williams). 
Lambeau, L., La Question Louis XVII. 

Lanne, Adolphe, Louis XVII. et Le Secret de la Revolution. 
Lenotre, Vieux Papiers (La Simon). 
Meves, Augustus, The Prisoner of the Temple. 
Nauroy, Ch., Les Secrets des Bourbons. An Abridged Account 

of the Misfortunes of the Dauphin (Naundorfif), 
Provins, Henri, Le Dernier Roi Legitime de France. 
Revue des Questions Historiques, 1882. Article by Sico- 

ti^re. 




MARIE ANTOINETTE 
From a painting by Callct 



THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

CHAPTER I 

A PRINCE IS BORN A REVOLUTION BEGINS 

AT Versailles there was born in 1785 a prince, 
^ third child of Marie-Antoinette and Louis 
XVI., King of France and Navarre. Nothing 
in the circumstance of his birth indicated how 
strange a career awaited him, nor suggested 
that in this little boy had been put into the 
world what was destined to become the most 
romantic personage of the Bourbon dynasty, 
and the saddest figure in all the history of 
France. 

He was a second son, and to all appearance 
his foreordained place in life was to be in youth 
an unimportant younger prince, and to change, 
on the accession of his elder brother, to an 
equally obscure Monsieur. But four years later 
death altered all that, and made of this boy 
the heir of France and all her miseries. 

Just such a lot had been his father's, who. 



2 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

born a younger son, came unexpectedly, thanks 
to the death of his elder brothers, into the 
ill-starred kingdom of Louis XV. This un- 
foreseen inheritance was of a piece with the 
ill-luck that was throughout his life the daily 
fate of this blameless and stupid man, whom 
Nature intended for an industrious bourgeois, and 
whom an absent-minded Providence set down 
instead on the throne of France— the worst 
example in history of a square peg in a round 
hole. 

Poor Louis could do nothing right. He could 
not manage his kingdom, nor love his wife, nor 
even dance a minuet. Shy, awkward, incom- 
petent, he could only love his people, as none 
of his house had ever loved them before, while 
always doing what was worst for them and 
for himself. Perhaps, as he jolted over the 
cobbles of Paris a few years later, this unhappy 
King, who meant so well, and did so ill, may 
have considered that the road to his scaffold 
was paved indeed with his good intentions. Had 
Louis but only meant ill by his country, he 
might have mastered it, and lived to a right 
Bourbon old age, to die in comfort in his 
royal bed, leaving behind him to his heir the 
same fine kingdom he had himself inherited. 
But Louis, alas, always meant well. 

At fifteen, a fat, silent boy, he married the 



A PRINCE IS BORN 3 

Austrian Archduchess, Marie-Antoinette, herself 
a child, but already full of that charm which was 
always peculiarly her own. 

Scarcely had she reached Paris when one of 
the court, pointing to the people who cheered the 
young Dauphine, said to the bride, '* Madame, 
you have there before your eyes not one, but 
two hundred thousand lovers." 

A fortnight after her marriage, while the 
festivities were still in progress, there occurred 
a panic amongst the crowd gathered to see the 
fireworks. More than a thousand people were 
killed. The catastrophe was an omen, perhaps, 
of the tragic fate that awaited Marie- Antoinette 
in her new country, where her two hundred 
thousand humble lovers were destined so soon 
to grow cold and her husband was destined for 
so long to prove indifferent. 

The beauty of this pretty child was as un- 
deniable as was her indiscretion. The famous 
description which Madame Le Brun has written 
gives an excellent idea of her charm. 

** Marie- Antoinette was tall," says the royal 
portrait painter, *'and admirably proportioned; 
plump, without being too much so. Her arms 
were lovely. She had small and perfectly-shaped 
hands, and charming little feet." (Her foot 
and leg were worthy of the Venus de Medici, 
according to her dressmaker.) 



4 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

" She walked better than any woman in 
France, holding her head very upright with 
a majesty that denoted the Sovereign in the 
midst of her court, but without permitting this 
majestic bearing to detract in the least from 
the sweetness and grace of her whole aspect." 

Meeting her when Queen at Fontainebleau, 
the painter ventured to compliment Marie- 
Antoinette on her beautiful carriage. 

Marie- Antoinette laughed. '' Isn't it true," 
she asked, ''that if I were not Queen, people 
would say I looked insolent ? " 

In face, her beauty was of an irregular sort, 
her lips over full, perhaps, her chin dented, 
her eyes not large and almost blue, and her 
nose thin and well modelled. Her expression 
was gentle and appealing, for Marie- Antoinette 
had a pitiful instinctive wish to please all whom 
she met. Her chief beauty, however, was her 
magnificent complexion. ** I could never in 
painting her obtain the effect I wished," says 
Madame Le Brun. " Paints could not depict 
the freshness and delicate tints of her skin, 
the like of which I have never seen in any 
other woman." 

It is no wonder that this charming girl fasci- 
nated all France, touched the heart — so it is 
said — of old Louis XV., her grandfather-in-law, 
and aroused the jealousy of the royal favourite. 



A PRINCE IS BORN 5 

Madame du Barry. The wonder is only that 
her husband, dull though he was, did not, from 
the first, feel her attraction. Perhaps she be- 
wildered him, this beautiful young creature who 
had been flung into his humdrum life ; perhaps 
he was afraid of her. At any rate, the young 
Prince appeared indifferent to her, while Marie- 
Antoinette, grieved and resentful, was forced 
to seek how best she might avenge herself for 
his slight and find distraction against his apathy. 
Naturally capricious and light-headed, the girl 
threw herself into more than natural extra- 
vagances and indiscretions. She was sowing, 
poor Princess, the seeds of that unpopularity 
which was destined, years after, to destroy her. 

Neither she nor her husband had reached 
their twentieth birthdays when Louis XV. died, 
bequeathing to his grandson the revolution which 
the old King's life of long-drawn infamy had 
made nearly inevitable. 

*'Oh, God!'" cried the boy and girl, kneeling 
side by side to hear the news of his death, 
**we are too young to reign. Guard us and 
protect us ! " But their prayer was unheard, 
and the oppressed nation showed itself but too 
ready to visit on these two children the sins of 
their grandfather. 

Louis had no idea how to reign. '' He 
might have made the best workman in France," 



6 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

but he was a very poor king. Marie- Antoinette, 
even had she been in sympathy with him, 
could not have helped him greatly. He was, 
despite his incompetence — perhaps because of 
it — a man of mulish obstinacy. The Queen 
therefore, even if she had wished, could not 
have influenced him much in public affairs. 
It does not seem, however, that she often 
wished to do so. She was essentially a woman 
rejoicing in social matters, neither caring for 
serious things nor able to understand them. 
She left Louis free to accomplish his own de- 
struction in his own way. Poor, stupid, good 
Louis took advantage of his opportunity. France 
was in that condition when, to be saved from 
disaster, it needed a king who was a genius ; 
instead, there was set on the throne a man 
who was in many ways next to a fool. The 
consequences were tragic and inevitable. 

Marie-Antoinette, meantime, was struggling 
against a mass of cruel intrigues. From her 
husband's family she had met, from the moment 
of her marriage, with dislike and disloyalty. 
The King's aunts opposed her jealously, his 
brothers worked against her, one by attempting 
to make illicit love to her, the other by plotting 
against her and spreading false rumours about 
her. We can only wonder that, in the midst 
of so little sympathy and so much distrust, this 



A PRINCE IS BORN 7 

frivolous and much-tempted young Queen, long 
unloved by her husband and disappointed of 
much-desired children, still kept herself guiltless 
of any faults except a compromising but quite 
innocent giddiness. 

The royal couple was eight years childless, 
and during this time the Comte de Provence 
and the Comte d'Artois, Louis's younger brothers, 
grew to hope that the throne might, in default 
of direct heir, pass to them. Provence, the 
elder, was naturally the more ambitious. He 
hated Marie-Antoinette, and was incurably 
jealous of the brother but for whom he would 
have reigned. He was — of this the actions of 
his whole life leave no possibility of doubt — a 
thoroughly unscrupulous man. 

He incited the handsome Comte dArtois, it 
is said, to his dishonourable and unsuccessful 
attempts to gain his Queen's love. On the 
birth of a son to the Comte and Comtesse 
d'Artois, Monsieur warned the father with a 
vile cynicism to ''take care lest in pursuing his 
own love-affairs he do an injury to his own heir." 

At last, in 1778, Marie- Antoinette's first child 
was born — alas ! a girl — for France was im- 
patient for a Dauphin, and the disappointment 
did not increase the Queen's swift-diminishing 
popularity. To Louis, however, any child of 
Marie-Antoinette's was welcome, for his feelings 



8 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

towards his Queen had by this time changed 
completely, and he now loved her with an 
adoration which the rakish Bourbons had not 
till then been wont to give to their legitimate 
consorts. 

The Comte de Provence was delighted at the 
Queen's disappointment, which left him still 
heir-presumptive. None the less, with an asto- 
nishing boldness, he dared to pretend that the 
child was illegitimate. 

It was at the little Princess's christening that 
he made publicly this scandalous insinuation. 

The ceremony had begun, and the Comte de 
Provence, as godfather, was holding his baby 
niece in his arms. 

" What name shall be given to this child ? " 
asked the priest. 

''Monsieur," replied the Prince maliciously, 
''that is not the first question you have to ask. 
You should first inquire who are its father and 
mother." 

The priest blushed, the crowd tittered, and 
the Comte de Provence, delighted with the 
scandal he had caused, smiled sardonically, 
holding carefully in his arms the while the 
baby whose dishonour he was trying to ac- 
complish. The incident was typical of this 
man, whose manners were perfect, but whose 
heart was full of intrigue. 



A PRINCE IS BORN 9 

Three years later, the son that France desired 
and the Comte de Provence dreaded was born. 
This child, destined to a short life, seemed 
none the less to put an end to Monsieur's am- 
bition, and to that of his younger brother, the 
Comte d'Artois. 

'*Oh, papa! how little my cousin is! "cried 
the young son of this latter, when for the first 
time he had looked upon the baby Dauphin. 

"The day will come when you will think 
him great enough, my dear," answered the 
disappointed Comte dArtois bitterly. 

Versailles was full of intrigues and quarrels 
and magnificent extravagance. Starving France, 
meantime, was inundated with libellous pamph- 
lets about Marie-Antoinette, whom the people 
had been led to think was beggaring them. 
It seems unbelievable that such scandalous 
matter should have been printed and circulated 
about the woman whose seat on the French 
throne was at that time still firm enough. 

In one pamphlet we find Marie-Antoinette 
described as *' a bad daughter, a bad wife, a 
bad mother, and a bad Queen," and to this 
is appended "a list of the persons with whom 
she has had dishonourable relations." In another 
pamphlet, entitled "The Iscariot of France," 
she is compared to Judas ; the resemblance, 
in the eyes of those who hated her, being 



10 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

strengthened by the fact that she was "red- 
headed like the traitorous apostle." 

The popular hatred of Marie- Antoinette is 
a thing not altogether easy to understand. This 
charming and frivolous lady seems hardly a 
forceful enough person to have aroused so 
intensely the detestation of her subjects. She 
was extravagant, it is true, but extravagance 
was no new fault on the part of French rulers. 

Why, then, did they hate her so bitterly? It 
will always be something of a mystery. In 
like fashion, there will always be something 
inexplicable in the passionate devotion with 
which the memory of this unhappy woman is 
cherished even to the present day, depending, 
I am convinced, not entirely on the fact of her 
misfortunes, but rather on some subtle strength 
of personality which, all unrealised, made this 
young Queen, though apparently a light-minded 
butterfly, in truth a woman who really counted 
in the world. However trivial may have been 
her mind and frivolous her character, there was 
none the less about Marie- Antoinette an in- 
tangible glamour and atmosphere that pre- 
vented her contemporaries, as it has prevented 
us, from ignoring her. They loathed her. We 
adore her. No one has passed her by un- 
noticed. 

Thus, in the midst of an ever-growing dislike, 



A PRINCE IS BORN 11 

the Queen and her children, all unconcerned, 
disported themselves amidst the grandeurs of 
Versailles, and the studied and expensive sim- 
plicity of Trianon, while day by day the great 
revolution drew nearer and nearer. 

Meantime, in 1785, another Prince was born 
— the baby who was destined to become The 
Little Dauphin. It was on Easter Sunday, 
and the birth, so it was said, took place under 
a lucky star. But in pronouncing this baby's 
birth-star a lucky one the astrologers gave their 
own science a death-blow. 

No such extraordinary scene as had taken 
place at the birth of the Queen's first child 
occurred again. On the earlier occasion, the 
old-fashioned court etiquette had permitted, 
according to the account written by Marie- 
Antoinette's lady-in-waiting, Madame Campan, 
that all persons indiscriminately might enter 
the Queen's chamber at the moment of the 
birth. At the birth of the Princess the crowd 
of people who poured into the room was so 
great that the crush almost destroyed the 
Queen. 

** During the night," says Madame Campan, 
**the King had taken the precaution to have 
secured with cords the enormous tapestry 
screen which surrounded Her Majesty's bed. 
But for this, they would certainly have been 



12 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

thrown down upon her. It was impossible to 
move about the chamber, which was filled with 
so motley a crowd, one might have fancied 
oneself at some place of popular amusement. 
Finally, the servants dragged out by the collar 
such inconsiderate persons as would not leave 
the room voluntarily." 

This incredibly barbarous custom was there- 
after abandoned, and, in consequence, only the 
members of the royal family and a few others 
bore witness to the birth of Prince Louis-Charles, 
between six and seven o'clock in the evening of 
Easter Sunday, March 27, 1785. 

Contrary to the ancient custom which post- 
poned the baptism of royal children for some 
years, the baby Prince was christened imme- 
diately, and was given the title of Due de 
Normandie — one not used since the times of 
Charles VII. — within two hours of his birth. 
The ceremony took place in the chapel of Ver- 
sailles, and was conducted, curiously enough, 
by Cardinal de Rohan, who was then in the 
midst of the famous diamond necklace intrigue, 
which so greatly and so unfairly damaged the 
reputation of Marie-Antoinette. The godfather 
was the child's uncle, the Comte de Provence, 
afterwards Louis XVIII., and the godmother 
Marie-Antoinette's sister, the Queen of Naples, 
who was in her absence represented by another 



A PRINCE IS BORN 13 

of the baby's aunts, Madame Elisabeth, that 
gentle sister of the King who ''possessed the 
charm of a pretty milkmaid and was an angel 
of goodness." 

The King and all the court were present, 
and afterwards there was a great celebration, 
with fireworks, for the people. Next night 
there was lighted on the Place de Greve, ac- 
cording to the usual custom, a great bonfire of 
five hundred faggots crowned with a green 
tree. 

We hear nothing, however, of any such de- 
monstration as took place at the birth of the 
first Dauphin, Louis-Charles's elder brother by 
four years. On this former occasion, the popu- 
lace, delighted at the arrival of a long-awaited 
heir, sent deputations of all the trades from 
Paris to Versailles to pay their respects to 
the royal baby. There came chimney-sweeps 
and locksmiths, and butchers and representa- 
tives of all the other trades of the period, each 
bearing appropriate emblems, and finally — with 
a tactlessness that was at once gruesome and 
comic — a body of grave-diggers with their tools. 

" The child is doomed ! " cried the courtiers ; 
and in this case the superstitious triumphed, 
for eight years later the grave-diggers did their 
work for this boy whose birth had been greeted 
so gloomily. 



14 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

When Louis-Charles was born there occurred 
something quite as ill-omened, though none 
realised it at the time. Marie- Antoinette went 
to Paris in great pomp to give thanks for her 
recovery, and supped ceremoniously in the 
evening at the Temple, the Comte dArtois's 
town residence. Seven years later, she and 
the child at whose birth she was rejoicing 
were destined to find in this place their miser- 
able prison. 

Thus the shadow of a prison fell across the 
cradle of this Prince, whose story is stranger 
than that of any child who ever lived before. 
For five hundred years France has called by 
one title the heir-apparent to her throne, yet 
there is none who does not recognise that *' The 
Little Dauphin " can only mean this same Louis- 
Charles. Above all the princes of his house 
he stands pre-eminent. His is the distinction 
of sorrow, of romance, and of mystery. 



CHAPTER I I 

A HAPPY CHILD 

npHE baby Louis-Charles commenced his life 
^ in troubled times. When he was but a few 
months old there became public the extraordinary- 
intrigue of the necklace, the details of which are 
so romantic they might almost have originated in 
the fertile imagination of Alexandre Dumas rather 
than in the actual history of France. When the 
child was a little past four years of age, there met, 
after endless discussions, the States-General, that 
gigantic political mistake which was as the apply- 
ing of a match to the ready-prepared tow of the 
Revolution. Ten weeks later, the Bastille fell. 
Yet, despite these public disturbances, the little 
Prince's babyhood and early childhood were 
supremely happy. 

Marie- Antoinette, however unsuccessful a 
stateswoman and foolish a queen she may have 
been, was certainly an affectionate and thoughtful 
mother, while Louis was of quite the stuff of 
which kind fathers are made. The queen had 

been brought up herself by that brilliant woman, 

15 



16 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

the Empress Maria-Theresa, who taught the little 
Archduchess as a child rather to fear and respect 
than to love her. Marie- Antoinette, in turn, 
forming the plan of education for her own off- 
spring, as is so often the case with parents, on 
what she deemed to have been the errors in her 
own, determined that her children should never 
feel anything but unconstrained and at home with 
their mother. 

The family on which she made this amiable 
experiment was not a large one. Besides the 
Due de Normandie, there was Madame Royale, 
his sister, a little girl some six and a half years 
older than himself, his brother the Dauphin, who 
had the advantage of him by four years, and his 
baby sister, who was born in July 1786, and 
lived not quite twelve months. Until the death 
of the first Dauphin in 1789, Louis-Charles was, 
of course, only a second and less valued son, 
since royalty may not treat its children with the 
impartial affection possible to humbler parents. 
It is inevitable and necessary that the eldest son 
of a king should be his most important child, 
probably the best loved, certainly the most care- 
fully watched and guarded ; and it is for this 
reason not to be wondered at, that when the 
first Dauphin developed symptoms of a fatal and 
disfiguring disease, there was a sudden access of 
interest on the part both of his family and the 




LOUIS XVI 

From a pat7iting by Callet at Versailles 



A HAPPY CHILD 17 

court, in the person of the little Due de Nor- 
mandie, the next in succession. 

Physically he was as strong as his poor elder 
brother was feeble, and, as the one young Prince 
sank gradually into crippled invalidism, the other 
increased steadily in health. Louis-Charles was 
a handsome child, tall and straight, with light 
brown hair that hung in curls on his shoulders 
and the fine, clear colour that was Marie- Antoin- 
ette's greatest charm. His eyes, too, were blue 
like his mother's, and he had her dimpled chin. 
It is said that he combined the royal appearance 
of the Queen with the amiable look of the good- 
natured Louis, and that his charm of person and 
manner was felt by all who approached him. He 
was a very active, agile little person, a true boy, 
fond of running and jumping, afraid of nothing, 
and eager to risk his life and limbs in dare-devil 
attempts to show his childish strength and skill. 

He was healthy, too, ''a true peasant's child, 
tall, red-cheeked, and fat," except for a period in 
his babyhood when he suffered from convulsions. 
It is about this malady that a curious story is 
told. It seems that his doctor decided it was 
necessary for the relief of his complaint that 
leeches should be applied behind the baby's ears. 
The royal governess, the Duchesse de Polignac, 
fearing lest this operation might prove very 
harrowing to the feelings of so tender-hearted 



18 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

a mother as Marie-Antoinette, decided not to 
tell her anything about it. Writing to the King, 
she asked his consent to this well-meaning de- 
ception. He agreed, and came himself to wit- 
ness the application, which was quite successful. 
As it chanced, however, the Queen suddenly- 
arrived in the room, saw the traces of blood, 
and, in terrible alarm, demanded furiously what 
they were doing to her baby. It is easy to picture 
the very human scene — the baby Prince crying, fat 
King Louis standing by helpless and troubled, 
the frightened and angry mother accusing them, 
very likely, of trying to murder her child, and 
the governess vainly endeavouring to soothe her 
ruffled mistress, pacify the baby, and make ex- 
planations. Of course the matter was settled 
amicably in the end, but at the moment it almost 
led to the dismissal of the royal favourite. 

The post of Governess to the Children of 
France, which the Duchesse de Polignac came 
near losing, was one held in high esteem and was 
a very influential one at court. The Duchesse 
de Polignac had gained it in 1782, thanks to 
the fact that she was one of Marie-Antoinette's 
prime favourites ; but it was a choice very 
unpopular with the people, who disliked her 
intensely, and cried out angrily, when she was 
appointed, '' Shall the heir for whom we have 
waited so long be educated by a Polignac ? " 



A HAPPY CHILD 19 

The children had, besides, the Abbe dAvaux 
for their instructor, a man who, though not 
very learned, possessed the far greater merit of 
being able to make himself attractive to chil- 
dren, so that the simple lessons he gave his 
royal pupils seemed more like play to them 
than tasks. The King and Queen, however, 
gave, both of them, much time and attention 
to the boy's education. 

It was Marie- Antoinette who gave him his 
first lessons in reading. She also gave him 
little music-lessons, playing for him on the 
harpsichord simple airs with a pretty melody, 
which she had composed or learned specially 
for him. She used sometimes, too, to sing to 
him, in the voice which Madame Le Brun said, 
rather cruelly, was not always in tune. The 
little Prince, however, was not so critical as 
the portrait-painter, and used to listen in fas- 
cination to her songs. Once, indeed, he sat so 
still that his aunt, Madame Elisabeth, accused 
him of having been asleep. At this he looked 
at her with hurt astonishment. 

** Could any one sleep," he asked solemnly, 
** when Mamma-Queen is singing ? " 

There is no doubt that the Queen was 
immensely proud of her child. A naive and 
charming letter, which she wrote about him in 
1789, and which the MM. de Goncourt pub- 



20 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

lished for the first time in their Histoire de 
Marie- Antoinette^ runs as follows : — 

" My son is to-day aged four years, four 
months, and two days. I say nothing of his 
looks ; it is only necessary to see him. His 
health has always been good, even in the cradle, 
but we noticed from the first that his nerves 
were very sensitive, and the least noise made 
an impression on him. He was a little late 
with his first teeth. ... 

** Like all strong, healthy children, he is 
high-spirited, violent in his anger, and rather 
thoughtless ; but he is a good child, and is 
tender and affectionate when his vivacity does 
not carry him away. He has an unbounded 
amour-propre, which may one day turn out to 
his advantage. ... He is very faithful when 
he has promised a thing, but he is extremely 
indiscreet, he repeats easily anything he may 
have heard, and often, without meaning to lie, 
he adds what he has seen in his imagination 
to what he has seen with his eyes ; this is his 
greatest fault, and one which we must correct. 
Otherwise, I repeat— he is a good child, and 
with firmness, but not too much severity, we 
can make what we wish of him. Severity 
makes him revolt, for he has a great deal of 
character for his years. For example, since his 
babyhood, the word ' pardon ' has always shocked 



A HAPPY CHILD 21 

him ; he will do or say anything that is asked of 
him when he has committed a fault, but the word 
* pardon ' he cannot pronounce except with tears 
and infinite pain. 

" My children," the Queen goes on, *' have 
always been taught to have confidence in me, 
and when they have done wrong to come and 
tell me themselves. In scolding them I have 
the air of being more grieved than angry. I 
have accustomed them to the idea that a 'yes' 
or 'no' from me is irrevocable, but I always 
give them a reason which they can understand, 
so that they shall not suppose it caprice on my 
part. My son does not yet know how to read, 
and learns slowly ; he is too flighty to apply 
himself to lessons. He has no idea of haughti- 
ness in his head, and I trust this will continue 
Our children learn soon enough who they are. 

" He loves his sister dearly ; whenever any- 
thing pleases him, whether it is some excursion 
or some gift, his first impulse is to ask that 
his sister may have the same. He was born 
gay. He needs to be much in the open air, 
for the sake of his health, and I am glad to 
have him play and work in the garden." 

This garden of which his mother writes acted 
a very important part in the young Prince's child- 
hood. The King, who was himself an expert 
locksmith, wished that his son should also learn 



22 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

a trade, and so provided the little boy with a 
plot of ground near the chateau at Versailles, 
and supplied him with all sorts of miniature 
tools, spades, rakes, watering-pots, and so on. 
Put under the tutelage of excellent gardeners, 
he flung himself delightedly into his father's 
scheme, and was soon able to tend his little 
garden unaided. With boyish gallantry, he 
liked to fancy his sole interest in this fascinat- 
ing new plaything lay in the fact that it gave 
him an opportunity to pay pretty attentions to 
his mother by offering her a daily bouquet of 
his own raising. Every morning, his first act 
on getting up was to run out to his garden, 
escorted only by his dog Moufflet and a serving- 
woman, to pick the bunch of flowers which was 
to be laid on the Queen's dressing-table before 
she got up. 

It is a truism that children in very high 
places are always reputedly beautiful and good 
and wise, and Louis-Charles's reputation was like 
all the rest. His beauty, however, was certainly 
not exaggerated ; we have the best of proofs of it 
in the portraits by Madame Le Brun. Of his 
goodness there is more room for doubt, and it 
does not seem likely that he was one of those 
unpleasant creatures, a saintly child. Indeed, 
the very healthiness that helped to make 
him beautiful also made him lively and mis- 



A HAPPY CHILD 23 

chievous, and inclined — as the more candid of 
his historians admit — to be impatient with the 
women who had to deal with him at such trying 
moments as bed-time. He was, however, fair 
and honourable, and ready to accept the punish- 
ments which his childish indiscretions earned 
for him. 

M. de Beauchesne, who has collected a mass 
of anecdotes about his childhood, recounts how 
one day he robbed of his flute a young page 
who was accompanying him on a walk, and hid 
the instrument in a tree in the garden. Learn- 
ing of this escapade, the Queen decided to 
give him his punishment by proxy. Taking 
Moufflet, his little pet dog, she shut it up in 
a dark room alone. Naturally enough, the 
animal howled plaintively, and every howl cut 
the heart of his erring master. Finally, the 
little Prince ran to Marie-Antoinette in tears. 
" It is I who stole the flute, not Moufflet," he 
told her, *' so please set him free and put me 
in his place." This wish was carried out, and, 
on emerging from his imprisonment, Louis- 
Charles's first act was to go find the flute and 
give it back. 

Of his childish quickness of mind we have 
many instances, and there are scores of re- 
partees and sallies attributed to him, some of 
them, however, so brilliant that it is difficult to 



24 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

believe the child's conversation was not some- 
times gilded by those who repeated it. One 
example of his quick wit, reported by Madame 
Campan, we have no reason to doubt. Marie- 
Antoinette, it happened, was hearing Madame 
Royale repeat a history lesson, and the young 
Princess could not for the moment recollect the 
name of the Queen of Carthage. The boy, it 
chanced, knew the name, and was vexed and 
impatient at his big sister's forgetfulness and 
anxious to help her out. Finally he bethought 
himself of the experiment of saying to her — 
though he never, as a rule, spoke to her in the 
second person singular — " But dis done " (in 
French the pronunciation of this phrase and 
that of the name of Dido are practically the 
same) *'the name of the Queen to mamma; dis 
done, what her name was ! " 

Not always so wise as on this occasion, the 
lad sometimes muddled his ideas very badly 
in the quaint fashion peculiar to children, as on 
the day when he insisted on pushing his way 
through a prickly rose-bush, giving as his reason 
— explained with a most noble and lofty air- 
that " Thorny paths lead to glory." It is said 
he was much chagrined when Marie-Antoinette 
showed him how absurdly he had misapplied 
the proverb. 

Meanwhile, as the little Prince was growing 



A HAPPY CHILD 25 

up happy and well-beloved in the chateau at 
Versailles, and in his miniature garden on the 
terrace, the clouds of the Revolution were 
gathering dense and black over his head. Even 
at the time of his birth France was full of dis- 
satisfaction with royal institutions and dislike 
for Marie-Antoinette. A year later, at St. 
Cloud, she made pathetic attempts to reclaim 
her popularity, and showed herself continually 
in the gardens, in the company of her children, 
but with no better result than that the people 
greeted her attempts with ridicule, and used to 
exclaim, as a sort of contemptuous catchword, 
** Let us go see the fountains and the Austrian," 
while the poor Queen, the Austrian, walked 
among her scornful subjects proud and cold, 
with a haughtiness that was itself a further 
offence. When the Due de Normandie was 
three, there fell upon France the terrible winter 
of 1788, when the Seine was frozen over and 
the cold more intense than it had been for eighty 
years. The sufferings of the people were horrible, 
and day by day the great revolt drew nearer. 

Finally, Louis XVI. assembled the States- 
General, which met for the first time since 
1 6 14. The little Prince was then just past 
four. With his sister, he watched from the 
windows of a house in Versailles the procession 
that celebrated the opening, while the only part 



26 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

in the pageant possible to his elder brother — by 
this time crippled and helpless and almost at the 
end of his sufferings — was to lie on cushions on 
the balcony of the Petite Ecurie and look at the 
procession. Just a month later, this unhappy 
little life ended, and after eight years, some of 
them passed in great pain, Louis-Joseph-Xavier- 
Frangois, heir of France, died on June 4, 1789. 
Within two hours of the death, the Revolution 
began to exhibit its disregard, not merely of 
Royalty, but of the ordinary considerations of 
humanity. A deputation of the Tiers - Etat 
wished to see the King on business, and, with a 
heartless lack of common decency, insisted on 
being received at once, although Louis was at 
the moment much broken by his bereavement, 
and was shut up alone in his private apartment. 
At first the King declined to see them at such a 
time, but at last, with characteristic weakness, he 
yielded, only asking pathetically, as he admitted 
the tactless intruders, '' Are there, then, no fathers 
amongst them ? " 

Immediately on the death of the first Dauphin, 
Louis-Charles succeeded to his title and pre- 
tensions, and entered forthwith upon what was 
to be one of the most romantic and probably 
quite the saddest career in the history of France. 
It was a great change in the life of the little 
Prince, this leaping in a day from the uninter- 



A HAPPY CHILD 27 

esting and unimportant position of younger son, 
a prospective ** Monsieur," to that of Dauphin of 
France, heir to the oldest kingdom in Europe. 
** He is a very fine child, and the greatest hopes 
are held for him," says a letter-writer of the time. 
— Poor little Prince ! we know how they were 
destined to be fulfilled. Within six weeks, on 
the 14th July 1789, the Bastille had surrendered, 
and with the force of its fall monarchy trembled 
at its foundations. This was the first great event 
of the Revolution. It has been called the first 
step up Louis's scaffold. It was also the opening 
move in the tragedy that robbed the Dauphin of 
his parents, his throne, and perhaps his life. 



CHAPTER III 

THE LAST OF VERSAILLES 

THE intensely important political results of 
the fall of the Bastille probably seemed 
to the Dauphin quite negligible compared with 
something else which the catastrophe brought 
about, and which, at his tender age, touched him 
far more closely than could all the politics in the 
world. This was a change of governesses which 
followed immediately on the popular uprising. 
No sooner had the great prison fallen than the 
Duchesse de Polignac, always very unpopular, 
and a woman who had done more in the past 
years than any other person to bring Marie- 
Antoinette into disfavour, found her position at 
Court too dangerous to be maintained any longer, 
and, at the command of her friend and mistress, 
slipped away secretly one night from the palace, 
and emigrated. Thus the first injury that the 
Revolution did the little Prince was to rob him 
of his governess ; and that, perhaps, was not an 
injury after all, for the lady who replaced the 
Queen's favourite was a woman in many ways 

Madame de Polignac's superior. 

28 




MARIE ANTOINETTE AND HER CHILDREN 

Frovt a painting by Madame Vige'e Lebrun at Versailles 



THE LAST OF VERSAILLES 29 

This new governess was the Marquise de 
Tourzel, afterwards the Duchesse de Tourzel. 
Her husband had been the Grand Prevot of 
France, and had been killed not long before 
in an accident while hunting with the King. 
The distress, which the royal family naturally 
felt at this, gave the widow an additional 
claim to their interest, and when it became 
necessary to fill the Duchesse de Polignac's 
place, Marie-Antoinette had no hesitation in 
choosing Madame de Tourzel, whom she knew 
to be a woman of character, and one whose 
name, respected by all, would not arouse public 
prejudices and hatred as had that of "the Poli- 
gnac." The post of Governess to the Children 
of France had at other times been counted one 
of the greatest honour, but in the present state 
of things, it was merely an opportunity for the 
showing of self-sacrifice and devotion. Very 
likely Madame de Tourzel, much saddened in 
her widowhood, would have declined the dis- 
tinction had circumstances permitted her to con- 
sider it desirable. As it was, loyalty to her royal 
masters under a cloud demanded that she should 
accept the post, which could only be regarded as 
dangerous and undesirable, and the early days of 
August found her therefore established at Ver- 
sailles. 

In obedience to the Queen's orders, she gave 



30 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

special attention to the Dauphin, and never lost 
sight of him for a moment. Her memoirs, 
published not long ago, are full of interesting 
details about his early childhood. These she 
was able to supply, for the double reason that 
she was his constant companion up to the time 
of his imprisonment, and that— thanks to her 
character, which combined a keen sense of 
humour with firmness and a kindly disposition — 
she was exactly the sort of person to win the 
affection and confidence of a little child. 

Meanwhile, as the Dauphin and his sister 
were making friends with their new governess, 
public events and misfortunes were moving on 
swiftly. As soon as the Bastille fell, it was 
deemed advisable that the King should pay 
a visit to Paris, a thing which, in the upset 
conditions of the time, was fraught with much 
danger. The trip from Versailles to Paris was 
made on the 17th July, and Marie- Antoinette, 
who was left behind at the chateau, passed 
the day in the most terrible anxiety. It is 
not difficult to sympathise with this when we 
recollect that Louis himself had viewed the 
journey with so much apprehension that he 
had spent much of the night before putting 
his papers in order, had gone to confession and 
communion in the morning, and, as he left 
Versailles, had said a most touching farewell 



THE LAST OF VERSAILLES 31 

to his family and appointed the Comte de Pro- 
vence regent in case of his detention in Paris. 

All day long messengers were passing be- 
tween the city and Versailles, bringing Marie- 
Antoinette none too quieting news of the King's 
reception. The poor Queen, in deepest anxiety, 
was prepared, should they keep her husband 
captive, to go to Paris to give herself up, with 
her children, to share his fate. With a touch 
of absurdity which she probably did not notice 
in her trouble, she passed a considerable time 
in rehearsing the speech she proposed making 
to the Assembly in the event of her having 
to carry out this intention. The Dauphin spent 
the day near his mother, trying to comfort her, 
and constantly running backwards and forwards 
to the window, so that he might be the first to 
announce the King's return. With his little nose 
pressed against the glass, he looked anxiously up 
the Avenue de Paris, his childish mind troubled 
at a situation so far beyond his understanding. 

*' Why," he asked in puzzled distress, ** should 
they want to hurt papa ? He is so good." — It 
is a question that many have asked themselves 
besides the four-year-old Prince, finally to come 
to the cynical conclusion that **they wanted to 
hurt " Louis for exactly the reason that, in his 
little son's eyes, should have protected him — 
that is, because he was "so good." It may 



32 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

be remembered that nearly a century before, 
an Englishman had foretold that, if ever the 
French should have a king who deserved the 
title of a good-natured man, he would be de- 
throned. Good-natured Louis certainly was, 
and we have seen how true was the English- 
man's prophecy. 

At length, however, the anxious hours were 
over, and in the evening Louis returned safe to 
the chateau. Marie-Antoinette and the children 
flung themselves into his arms, Versailles was 
full of rejoicing, and the two brothers congratu- 
lated one another that the Comte de Provence's 
regentship had been the shortest and most 
peaceful in the annals of France. It is difficult 
to believe, however, that the admittedly ambitious 
and unscrupulous Comte de Provence would not 
in his secret heart have been glad to try his 
hand at a temporary regentship. 

It was something over two months after this 
trying day that a detachment of soldiers, the 
Flanders regiment, was brought to Versailles 
to help maintain order, for the famished and 
disturbed condition of the people led them to 
the committing of all sorts of outrages. To 
this arrival of the Flanders regiment is due 
indirectly the second great outbreak of the 
Revolution, the terrible time of the 5th and 
6th October 1789. 



THE LAST OF VERSAILLES 33 

It had long been customary in the French 
army to give a banquet to any regiment that 
came to a town. In deference to this custom 
an entertainment, or rather a series of enter- 
tainments, was given on an extravagant scale 
to welcome this new regiment to Versailles. At 
one of these banquets the King and Queen and 
the Dauphin were present, and were greeted 
with the greatest enthusiasm by the soldiers. 
This news of gaiety and of the prodigal wasting 
of food and wine while people were starving, 
added to the rumours that reached Paris to the 
effect that the nation's health had not been 
drunk at the banquet, and royalist sentiments 
had been expressed and white royalist cockades 
worn, aroused the greatest dissatisfaction in 
hungry Paris. 

On the 5th October this dissatisfaction blazed 
up into a sort of revolt. The poor, half-starved 
women of Paris gathered together in a body, 
and armed with flails, pikes, swords, and muskets, 
preceded by drums, and trailing a pair of ammu- 
nitionless cannon, they set off for Versailles, to 
set their grievances before the King. 

Naturally enough news of the approach of 
this alarming mob reached Versailles some 
time before the women themselves arrived. 
During the course of the day, while the King 
was out hunting and Marie- Antoinette was 
3 



34 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

sitting — for the last time in her life, as it 
chanced — in her beloved gardens at Trianon, 
and horses were standing ready harnessed to 
take the Dauphin for a drive, the terrifying 
news came that an army of market-women 
and ruffians was marching towards Versailles, 
with the supposed intention of attacking the 
chateau. 

At first it was proposed to take energetic 
measures of defence, but Louis, afraid, as 
always, of shedding blood, declined, and insisted 
that the army should be permitted to come on 
without opposition. At six o'clock, in a heavy 
fog, the women arrived at Versailles, and de- 
manded to see the King. Louis received a 
deputation of them, and treated them so gently 
and sympathetically that they were completely 
won over, and left him, crying out as they 
went, ''Long live the King!" This unex- 
pected change of heart on the part of their 
deputation was, naturally enough, extremely 
astonishing and incensing to the rest of the 
crowd who had not seen Louis, and these latter 
were with difficulty restrained from making an 
end of what they felt to be their traitorous 
comrades. 

During all this time Marie-Antoinette, against 
whom the fury of the mob was principally 
directed, had behaved with her usual fine cour- 



THE LAST OF VERSAILLES 35 

age, and had given careful directions to Madame 
de Tourzel what she should do with the royal 
children in case of actual attack. Presently, 
calm followed the tumult, and at two o'clock the 
Queen felt sufficiently relieved of anxiety to 
go to bed and fall asleep. It was a false 
security. 

Outdoors it rained heavily and was very dark, 
and now that the shops of Versailles had closed, 
there was nowhere for the Paris mob to go. 
The women were wet and hungry and aggrieved, 
and gradually, as the night passed, their discom- 
fort grew to indignation, their indignation to 
fury. At about six in the morning, by a 
simultaneous impulse of rage, the different groups 
united and forced their way into the chateau, 
killing, as they went, two bodyguards who tried 
to impede them. 

As they fought their passage they shouted, 
** Down with the Queen ! The Queen's head ! 
Down with Louis ! " They rushed along the 
corridors of the palace, bellowing as they went, 
''Where is the jade? Where are you, Marie- 
Antoinette? You have often danced to please 
yourself; now you shall dance for us!" Bran- 
dishing their flails and their pikes and their 
sickles, they shrieked, "Let us cut her throat! 
Let us cut off her head ! Let us eat her 
heart!" 



36 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

There is no shadow of doubt that these 
threats would have been carried out^ had not 
certain of the bodyguard and women of the 
Queen's service been able to wake her, to hurry 
her into a petticoat, and get her away just in 
time. Hardly was she gone, when the mad- 
women forced their way into her room, and, 
furious to find they had lost their victim, slashed 
her empty bed to tatters. 

While the attack was being made on the 
Queen's room, the Dauphin was being hastily 
waked and dressed. In the accounts of such 
terrible moments as these it is not to be won- 
dered that eye-witnesses should disagree as 
to details. Some tell us that, trembling for 
the life of his son, the King ran by a subter- 
ranean passage to the Dauphin's chamber and 
carried him away in his arms, that on the way 
the light went out, and the King ordered the 
lady who attended the Dauphin to catch hold 
of his nightshirt, so as not to become sepa- 
rated from him in the dark. It seems a pity 
to set aside this picturesque account for Madame 

^ The cruelty of which revolutionary mobs were capable is only 
too well known. In the case of the Princesse de Lamballe, for 
example, who was killed in the Massacres of September, unthink- 
able mutilations were inflicted (see Lenotre's Captivite et Mort 
de Marie- Antoi?iette, where good taste has compelled the author, 
before quoting Daujon's account of the incident, to" translate it 
into Latin). 



THE LAST OF VERSAILLES 37 

de Tourzel's simple statement that, learning 
of the danger, she got up and carried the 
Dauphin to the King's apartment. At any 
rate the whole royal family gathered together 
finally in the King's rooms, and the poor little 
sleepy Prince said, with pathetic inappropriate- 
ness, ''Mamma, I'm hungry!" — at which the 
Queen, unstrung, commenced to cry. 

The greatest confusion reigned both within 
and without the chateau. The people cried 
out loudly that the King must leave Versailles 
and go to Paris to live. Finally, much against 
his will, he agreed. 

All this time the fishwives were singing and 
dancing madly in the courtyard, and screaming 
out demands to see Marie-Antoinette. Yield- 
ing to their cries, the Queen went out on the 
balcony, holding by the hand her son and 
Madame Royale. *' No children ! " shouted the 
mob furiously, and the Queen, proud in her 
courage, sent back the Dauphin and his sister, 
and faced alone the crowd which meant to 
kill her. 

Even the drunken, crazed furies were moved ; 
there was a hush, and then, almost against 
their wills, they burst into a cry of *' Vive la 
ReineV' Abandoned as they were by every 
decent quality, the poor creatures could not 
but admire the queenliness of the Queen they 



38 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

loathed. Tears in her eyes, Marie- Antoinette 
left the balcony. She knew how little this 
hysterical enthusiasm meant, and, as she caught 
the Dauphin in her arms, and covered him with 
tears and kisses, she said sadly, **They will 
force us to Paris, nevertheless." 

Her prediction was well founded. At half- 
past one, after the hastiest preparations, the 
royal family got into their carriage, and drove 
away from the Versailles to which they were 
never to return. In the King's room there is 
still to be seen his clock, which ran down a few 
days after their departure, and has never been 
set going again. 

The journey to Paris was a trying ordeal. 
For escort they had, surrounding the carriage, 
soldiers, each one with a loaf of bread stuck on 
the point of his bayonet, ruffians armed with 
pikes, and drunken women with their hair hang- 
ing loose, covered with mud and blood, some 
sitting astride the cannon, others riding on the 
horses of the bodyguards, and all of them 
shouting and singing obscene songs. The royal 
family, says M. Hue, in his graphic account of 
the ride, could not lift up their eyes without 
seeing cannon pointed at their carriage. Not- 
withstanding their position, the King and Queen 
talked graciously to those of the mob who 
were near the carriage, saying they had always 



THE LAST OF VERSAILLES 39 

desired the happiness of the people, and that 
their wishes and sentiments had been much 
misrepresented. 

Many of the crowd, touched by this as they 
had been by the Queen's bravery, said frankly, 
** We did not know you were like this ; we have 
indeed been deceived." 

The ferocity of the rest of the crowd, however, 
only increased, and at a town along the route 
they even conceived the incredibly barbarous 
idea of stopping to get a barber to dress and 
powder the hair of the two murdered body- 
guards, whose severed heads they carried proudly 
on pikes. Every now and then the cry was 
raised, *' No more famine ! We are bringing 
with us the baker, the baker's wife, and the 
little baker's boy ! " So as not to miss any of 
the triumph of their progress, the mob made the 
journey last six hours. 

At last they reached Paris, to be met at the 
gates by Bailly, the mayor, who exclaimed, with 
a want of tact that must have seemed cruel to 
the royal party, ''What a happy day. Sire, is 
this that brings your Majesty and your family 
to Paris ! " 

What a happy day indeed ! With further lack 
of consideration, Bailly urged that the King should 
go into the Hotel de Ville for some sort of wel- 
coming ceremony, and tired though they were, 



40 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

the royal family was forced to yield. So fatigued, 
indeed, was the little Dauphin, that he slept in 
the arms of his governess through all the speeches. 

Finally, well into the evening, the royal family, 
miserable and worn-out, arrived at the Tuileries, 
thereafter to be their home. The palace had 
hardly been occupied since 1655— that is, for 
nearly 135 years — and no preparations had been 
made for their coming. Needless to say, there- 
fore, the furniture was tottering on its legs, the 
carpets in rags. 

** Everything is very ugly here," said the sleepy 
little Dauphin as he entered the palace. 

'* My son," answered Marie- Antoinette bravely, 
for she must have found the dismal, stuffy rooms 
a melancholy refuge after her awful day, " Louis 
XIV. lived here contentedly ; we should not be 
more difficult to please than he." 

The Dauphin spent the night in an unguarded 
room, the doors of which, warped, would barely 
shut. Faithful Madame de Tourzel barricaded 
them with what little furniture she could find, and 
passed the hours seated by the side of his bed. 

Such was the first night spent by Louis-Charles, 
Dauphin of France, in his " good city of Paris." 



CHAPTER IV 

TWENTY MONTHS AT THE TUILERIES 

THE baker, his wife, and the baker's boy" 
were in Paris, and for some few days 
their presence, so rudely gained, seemed to bring 
calm to the troubled populace, hope to the hungry. 
Even in the beginning, however, there occurred 
every now and again alarming incidents. On 
the morning after their arrival, they waked to 
find the courts and terraces of the Tuileries filled 
with a great crowd of people, shouting out that 
they wanted to see the King and his family. 
Hearing the tumult, the Dauphin ran and threw 
himself into Marie-Antoinette's arms, crying out, 
*' Grand Dieu, maman ! Is it going to be yester- 
day over again 1 " The constant crowds outside 
the palace kept shifting and renewing themselves 
for days, going away at night and coming back 
again in the morning, as if the royal family inside 
the long-disused chateau were some particularly 
interesting exhibits at a Zoo. Over and over 
again, the royal family were forced to show 
themselves to the crowd, some of whom were 



42 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

merely curious or genuinely interested, and others 
moved by the unkinder motive of a wish to jeer 
at the royalty they had conquered and led home 
captive. 

All this, the attack on his old home, the 
sudden moving to the new palace and the strange 
and terrible behaviour of the people, puzzled 
the little Prince exceedingly. One day, shortly 
after the arrival in Paris, he went to his father, 
and, looking up pensively at the big King, said 
he had something very serious to ask of him. 
Why, he asked, were his father's people, who 
had formerly loved him so well, all at once so 
angry with him ? Had his father done anything 
to hurt them ? 

Louis, always well disposed, lifted the little 
boy on his knees and spoke to him in words 
that have come down to us as follows : ^ — 

*' I wished, child, to render my people still 
happier than they were. I wanted money to 
pay expenses occasioned by wars. I asked my 
people for money, as my predecessors had 
always done, but the members who made up 
the Parliament opposed this, and said that my 
people alone had the right to decide on such 
a measure. I assembled the principal inhabi- 
tants of every town at Versailles — that is what 
is called the States-General. When they were 

^ Madame Campan, " Private Life of Marie-Antoinette." 



AT THE TUILERIES 43 

assembled, they required concessions of me 
which I could not make, either with due respect 
to myself or with justice to you who will be 
my successor. Wicked men have induced the 
people to rise, and brought about the excesses 
of the last few days. We must not blame the 
people for them." 

It is indeed no wonder that the child was 
astonished at the changes he saw all about 
him. The condition of the royal family was in 
many ways like that of prisoners. Wherever 
the King went he was followed, even if it was 
to go to Mass, by a chief of division ; the 
Queen and the Dauphin had for guards leaders 
of battalion, the rest of the family had only 
captains. Usually these guards were polite, 
but now and again one of them would find 
himself carried away by his novel position, and 
would dare to be familiar. 

The little Prince was taught that he ought to 
be as affable as possible to all these people, and 
to all Parisians whom he met, and he took great 
pains to carry out these instructions. One time, 
when he had found an opportunity to make a 
particularly gracious reply to some member of the 
Commune, he came and whispered proudly in his 
mother's ear, **Was that right?" As might be 
supposed, the manner of life at the Tuileries 
was very different from the ceremonious state 



44 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

kept up at Versailles. The Queen^still held Court, 
but infrequently, and the courtiers of misfor- 
tune^ I were very few. No one had any heart 
for gaiety. In the morning the Queen saw her 
children and went to Mass ; at one o'clock she 
dined with her family, excepting little Louis- 
Charles, and afterwards played billiards with 
Louis, and did needlework. In the evening, 
Monsieur and Madame (the Comte de Provence 
and his wife) came to supper. By eleven every 
one was in bed. 

The lack of Court gaieties, of course, made 
very little difference to the Dauphin, who had 
still his sister to play with, and the same 
governess and tutor to instruct him. What he 
missed most in the change from Versailles to 
Paris was his little garden. Finally Louis, 
seeing how real was the child's grief at the 
loss of his favourite toy, conceived the idea 
of giving him another garden, and a small piece 
of ground was set aside for his use in the 
Tuileries grounds, on the banks of the Seine. 
It was with transports of delight that he took 
possession of his new garden, and set himself 
to growing his flowers again and to raising 
rabbits. In this garden of his he used to 
receive, with the royal graciousness which he 
had already acquired, poor women and their 
children who came to tell him their troubles, and 



AT THE TUILERIES 45 

to whom he often made presents of money and 
flowers of his own raising. He had been 
brought up to be charitable by the mother who 
is said to have suggested the poor should eat 
cake since they had no bread, and he used to 
put away the greater part of his pocket-money 
in a little chest, so as always to be ready to 
satisfy demands made on his sympathy. 

On his daily visits to his garden Louis-Charles 
was escorted by a detachment of soldiers, a pro- 
ceeding which flattered his vanity exceedingly. 
He used to make his progress from the chateau 
to the terrace full of miniature self-importance, 
and smiling with delight and pride ; and used 
to invite the soldiers inside his garden, show 
them his rabbits, and present them with little 
nosegays. One day the escort was so numerous 
that it was plain they would not be able to fit 
into the garden, a misfortune which greatly dis- 
tressed him. 

It is not hard to imagine the oft-chronicled 
charm of the lad from the scraps of anecdote 
which we find recorded. Evidently, like other 
healthy boys, he had a tremendous admiration 
for soldiers, and was, needless to say, charmed 
with the idea — thought of at about that time — 
of forming a regiment of children, to be named 
after him, the Royal- Dauphin. This regiment 
was established with the Dauphin as its honorary 



46 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Colonel, and soon grew to be very large. The 
little soldiers wore uniforms that were the exact 
miniature of those of the French Guards, from 
white gaiters to three-cornered hat. 

It must not be supposed, however, that Louis- 
Charles was always a model child. His chief 
failing seems to have been a tendency to fall 
into tantrums. One day he got into a temper 
with Madame de Tourzel. '* If you don't do 
what I want," said he, with childish tyranny, '' I 
will cry so loud that they will hear me on the 
terrace, and then what will they say ? " 

The governess refused to be intimidated. 
" They will say you are a bad child," she 
answered coldly. 

** And if my crying makes me ill?" continued 
the enterprising youngster. 

*' Then I shall put you to bed and feed you 
on invalid's diet." 

Forthwith, the small Prince set himself to 
screaming and kicking the floor and making 
a great commotion. Without a word to him, 
Madame de Tourzel gave orders to prepare 
his bed and cook some bouillon for his supper. 
At this the Dauphin suddenly stopped his cry- 
ing, looked at her wisely, and said, '' I was 
only trying to see how far you would let me 
go ; I see I shall have to obey you, after all." 
Next day he remarked to the Queen, **Do 



AT THE TUILERIES 47 

you know whom you have given me for gover- 
ness ? — It is Madame Severe." 

Another day, he tried to play much the same 
trick on one of the other ladies, whose reply 
was more diplomatic even than Madame de 
Tourzel's. For no reason at all, he had thrown 
himself into a fury. The lady looked at him dis- 
approvingly. ** How foolish you are, Monsieur 
le Dauphin!" said she. *'You are a prince, 
and all the world has its eyes on you. And 
now they will say you have gone mad." This 
hint produced an immense impression on him, 
and it is said that after that the tantrums took 
place no more. 

By New Year the royal family had been at 
the Tuileries about three months. The Dauphin 
celebrated the holiday after a novel fashion, by 
suddenly announcing that he had learned to 
read, as a sort of New Year's present to his 
mother. This feat he had accomplished after 
great previous laziness, by the self-imposed 
means of a daily double lesson. 

Not long after Louis-Charles had so dis- 
tinguished himself, there followed a day of 
much political importance. This was the 4th 
February 1790, when the King formally accepted 
the new constitution, making at the same time 
the following promise : — 

** In concert with the Queen, who shares my 



48 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

sentiments, I will educate my son in accordance 
with the new order of things ; and I will teach 
him that a wise constitution will save him from 
the dangers of inexperience." Two days later a 
Parisian letter-writer said, '' Monsieur le Dauphin 
has been heard to state very plainly that he will 
never be an aristocrat." 

If there was any connection between the 
King's promise and his son's announcement, 
which is most unlikely, it must be admitted 
that Louis had been sowing the promised seed 
with most uncharacteristic swiftness. 

It was determined to hold a celebration in 
honour of the new constitution on the first 
anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, that is, 
on July 14, 1790. This was to be held on the 
Champ de Mars, where a huge amphitheatre 
was dug out, large enough to accommodate 
more than 250,000 spectators. So great was 
the popular enthusiasm of the moment, and so 
short the time allowed for the task, that not 
only workmen plied their spades on the Champ 
de Mars, but all sorts of other people — soldiers 
and women, monks and students, and even ladies 
who drove up to the scene of labour in their 
carriages. One day the King himself, on a 
visit of inspection, asked for a wheelbarrow, 
threw into it some shovelfuls of earth and, 
wheelbarrow in hand, continued his progress. 



AT THE TUILERIES 49 

amid the acclamations of the crowd.^ People 
seem to have done their share in the digging 
out of the amphitheatre for the Fete de la 
Federation in much the same spirit in which 
the ardently religious join in pious pilgrimages 
to holy shrines. 

At last the great day arrived, and — it was 
nature's omen for the future of the constitution 
— rain fell in torrents, and the spectators were 
forced to watch the ceremony from under their 
umbrellas. While the King was taking his oath 
Marie-Antoinette lifted up the Dauphin in her 
arms, as a sign that he joined in his father's 
words. Afterwards, the royal family returned 
to the Tuileries amidst cheers. 

The deputations that had come to Paris from 
the provinces to attend the fete were all of them 
extremely loyal in their sentiments — very different 
from the Parisians, who were already full of anti- 
Royalist feelings. It is said, indeed, that if Louis 
had had the initiative to take advantage of the 
devotion of the provincials to himself and his 
family, the political situation might even then 
have been saved. 

The Dauphin was particularly popular with 
these country-folk. One day, standing on a 
balcony near which were a quantity of these 

^ According to a contemporary newspaper, quoted in Miss 
MacLehoes's " From the Monarchy to the RepubHc in France." 
4 



50 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

people, he amused himself picking off the leaves 
of a lilac-bush. One of the fdddrds asked the 
child to give them to him, that he might keep 
them all his life. Immediately every fdddri 
wished for a like remembrance, and in a few 
moments the bush was stripped of its leaves. 
Again, they wished to visit the little Prince's 
garden, and their request was granted on con- 
dition that they would go into it a few at a 
time, so as not to tire the child by crowding 
upon him at his play-hour. He took this oppor- 
tunity to talk to them in his engaging fashion, 
and the fdddrds were delighted with him. *' You 
must come some day to Dauphine," said the 
deputation from that province, feeling a particular 
interest in the Dauphin, while the Normands 
begged him not to forget he had also borne 
the name of their province, and that Normandy 
would always be faithful to him. 

After xh^fdddrds had departed for their homes, 
the royal family returned to St. Cloud, to resume 
the holiday which had been interrupted by the 
fete, for the Tuileries was a very disagreeable 
residence in the hot weather, and they had been 
glad to leave it at the end of May. They were 
all happier in the freedom of the country, and 
Louis-Charles in particular increased every day 
in strength and sprightliness. It was during this 
holiday-time that he amused his family very 



AT THE TUILERIES 51 

much on the subject of the regiment called the 
Dauphin- Dragon ; quite a different affair, of 
course, from the child's regiment, the Royal- 
Dauphin. The Colonel of this former regiment 
wrote to Madame de Tourzel to present its re- 
gets that it could not come before the Dauphin 
on the occasion of its visit to Paris. This 
attention delighted the little boy. 

'' Mon DieuT' he cried. ** Isn't it fine to 
have a regiment at my age ! And should not 
I like to see it ! " 

The governess inquired what reply she should 
send to the Colonel on his behalf. The child 
was uncertain. ** You answer for me," said he. 

"I will say, then," said she teasingly, ''that 
Monseigneur le Dauphin, not knowing what to 
say at his age, will reply when he is bigger." 

'* Oh, how naughty you are ! " he cried angrily. 
"And what will my regiment think of me?" — 
and forthwith he commenced to beat the air 
furiously with his feet and hands — evidently his 
reform from the tantrums was liable to a relapse 
now and then. Finally, seeing that Madame de 
Tourzel only laughed at his rage, he calmed 
himself, looked at her severely, and said, " Very 
well ; I will make my own answer, since you 
do not care to help me. Say to the Colonel that 
I thank him, and that I would have loved to 
see my regiment and put myself at its head." 



52 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Then, seeing that every one approved of his 
answer, his childish vanity was appeased, and he 
kissed the governess and thanked her. Madame 
de Tourzel, who tells of this incident, concludes 
her story by the reflection that her young charge 
was a thorough Bourbon. 

It was in February of the following year, when 
Louis-Charles was nearly six, that conditions 
became so troubled as to lead his great-aunts, 
Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire, to leave France. 
This in itself aroused much popular dissatis- 
faction, the more so that the rumour got about 
that these ladies were carrying the Dauphin 
away with them, and that another child of the 
same aore was to be substituted for him and 
presented to the public in his place. This 
suspicion was, of course, unfounded, but the 
people credited it and became so wrought-up 
that, on February 24, the populace swarmed 
into the Tuileries garden and attempted to get 
into the chateau, to assure themselves that the 
Dauphin was really there. 

Preposterous as this idea was, however, it has 
survived even to the present day, and only re- 
cently an article in the Nouvelle Revue attempted 
to show that the royal child did indeed leave 
his parents at about that time, and subsequently 
appeared in Canada under the name of Rion, 
while thenceforward a substitute Dauphin whom 



AT THE TUILERIES 53 

he left behind him played his part. It is scarcely 
necessary to say that there is every proof that 
this is a fable, but, at the time, such a suspicion 
was quite sufficient to excite a nation just then 
only too ready to be excited. 

It was at about this time that the Assembly 
passed the decree by which the title of King 
was removed from Louis and, instead, that of 
''First Public Functionary" bestowed on him, 
while to the Dauphin was given the title of 
'' First Substitute," and to the Queen that of 
" Mother of the First Substitute." Imagine 
proud Marie - Antoinette calling herself the 
''Mother of the First Substitute"! 

Another episode, though a trifling one, showed 
how eager was the desire to insult royalty. This 
was when Palloi, the architect at the head of the 
work of pulling down the Bastille, came one day 
to the Tuileries expressly to present to the 
Dauphin a set of dominoes made from the stones 
of that great prison. Naturally enough, such a 
gift could only be painful to royalty, and was 
indeed only less suitable a present to offer the 
young Prince than would have been a toy carved 
from the bones of his ancestors. Even the child 
felt the cruel impropriety of it, and when Palloi, 
to make matters worse, remarked that the domi- 
noes would serve to remind him of the generosity 
with which his father had renounced all idea of 



54 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

despotism, the Dauphin blushed, and with diffi- 
culty made the reply that had been dictated to 
him in advance. 

Perhaps, however, the incident which proved 
beyond anything else how helpless and insig- 
nificant was become the position of royalty was 
the affair at Easter, 1791. The King, fearing 
that he would not be able to fulfil in Paris the 
religious exercises suitable to the season, had 
determined to go with his family to St. Cloud 
for a fortnight, and had made all his preparations 
to leave the Tuileries on Holy Monday. His 
whole household had already preceded him to 
St. Cloud, and his dinner was prepared there in 
expectation of his coming. 

The royal family got into a carriage at about 
one o'clock, and attempted to start. Evidently, 
however, a suspicion had got about that this 
St. Cloud visit masked an attempt on their part 
to emigrate from France. No sooner were they 
ready to set off than the National Guard revolted, 
caught the horses by the heads, and declared the 
King should not go, while the people who stood 
by applauded them. In vain Louis stuck his 
head out of the carriage window and uttered the 
just complaint, *' It is strange that, after having 
given liberty to the nation, I am refused it my- 
self." The crowd, notwithstanding his protest, 
declined to permit his departure, and some of 



AT THE TUILERIES 55 

the King's faithful adherents were ill-treated ; 
and finally, convinced that they could not leave 
the Tuileries without considerable danger, the 
royal family gave up the humiliating contest and 
re-entered the chateau. It was a great dis- 
appointment to the Dauphin to be forced thus 
to give up this country outing, for which, very 
likely, he had made many childish plans. 

**How naughty all these people are," he ex- 
claimed to Madame de Tourzel and his tutor, 
*'to cause papa so much pain, when he is so 
good ! " A moment later, he had flung himself 
down on a sofa and picked up aimlessly a story- 
book. Opening it at random, his eyes rested 
on some story about a little prisoner. Quickly 
he picked himself up and went to his tutor. 
** See the book that has fallen into my hands 
to-day," said he significantly, and the governess 
could not help crying that he, so young, should 
feel the force of such a coincidence. 

From the time of the frustrated Easter visit, 
the unhappiness of the royal family's condition 
was redoubled. Prisoners in a chateau that was 
guarded like a gaol, friendless in the midst of 
a hostile people, abandoned and helpless, their 
position was at once melancholy and dangerous. 
Here, somewhat condensed, is M. Lenotre's 
account of how Paris treated its King : At all 
the doors of the chateau were National Guards, 



56 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

suspicious and troublesome ; sentinels were at 
each of the approaches to the garden and along 
the terrace by the river, standing a hundred paces 
apart. Six hundred sectionnaires surrounded the 
palace ; they patrolled the courts, the stairs, the 
apartments, the kitchens. One of these men, 
placed at night in surveyance of a passage, re- 
ceived, he recounts, the command to abstain 
from sneezing, so thin was the partition that 
separated him from the Queen's bed ; to avoid 
his making a noise by moving about, he was 
furnished with a chair, that he might mount 
guard seated. 

No wonder that at last Louis, driven desperate, 
roused himself and determined to use strong 
measures to escape from his kingdom, which, no 
longer content to be ruled, had now changed 
places with its king, had made him subject and 
itself monarch. 



CHAPTER V 

FLIGHT TO VARENNES 

TN June 1791, there took place what was to 
-^ France one of the most important episodes in 
her history, and to Louis and his son the turn- 
ing-point of their careers. This was that tragi- 
cally mismanaged affair, the flight to Varennes. 
For fifteen months past there had been under 
consideration plans for the royal family to leave 
the country secretly, and at the time when the 
Easter visit to St. Cloud was so harshly resisted 
by the Paris mob, a project was well matured by 
which the King and his family should escape from 
the Tuileries and flee to Montmddy, near the 
Belgian frontier and the royal allies. From there 
Louis hoped to be able to treat with his rebellious 
kingdom with a dignity impossible while he was 
to all intents a prisoner in their midst. Needless 
to say the frustrated Easter visit, proving as it 
did that his kingship existed by courtesy alone — 
and very little of that — served but to strengthen 
his determination to escape as early as possible 
from a position at once humiliating and dangerous. 



58 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

The disastrous result of this flight was one 
of the saddest incidents in poor Louis's life. 
To his son it was even more than this ; on 
the results of the journey to Varennes hinged 
all his fate. Louis was temperamentally marked 
for ruin, he had failure written plain across his 
brow. Not so his bright heir ; to the Dauphin 
temporary escape from his troubled kingdom 
opened a world of possibilities. His capture at 
Varennes shut for ever the door of his prison. 

It would be impossible to exaggerate the im- 
portance of this episode. Its influence on 
French history, and therefore on that of the 
world, was enormous ; few other incidents have 
ever had such mighty consequences. Had the 
flight to Varennes been a success instead of a 
failure, had Louis and his son escaped from 
under the heavy hand of the Assembly, the 
history of Europe in two centuries would have 
been changed. With Louis safe over the fron- 
tier, there could have been no execution of the 
royal family, no Reign of Terror, no Napoleon, no 
Empire, no Waterloo, and no restoration ; and, 
finally, no poor little Dauphin languishing in 
the Temple. It is a useless, but very interesting 
pursuit to wonder what other events would have 
replaced these that I have named ; but certain it 
is they must have been replaced somehow, and 
equally certain is it that the far-reaching events 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 59 

of those few days are felt even Into the present. 
Who shall say that if the King had joined his 
allies in 1791, France would not to-day be ruled 
by Bourbon descendants of Louis XVII. ? 

The flight to Varennes has, however, another 
and a more human side than that of mere historic 
importance. It is perhaps unique among the 
incidents of history in its power to reveal by the 
events of a few hours the innermost characters 
of its actors. To understand Louis and Marie- 
Antoinette, that unhappy couple who would have 
made, in other spheres, an estimable locksmith 
and a blameless and delightful lady in society, 
but who were tragically unsuited to rule a great 
country in times of intense turmoil, we have only 
to study the series of foolish mistakes that 
wrecked their plans of escape. It is astonishing 
that the happenings of five days could so clearly 
epitomise the characteristics of two lifetimes. 
True it is, however, that during that brief period 
Louis and his Queen were what historic char- 
acters — like their humbler fellow-beings — so 
frequently decline to be, perfectly consistent with 
themselves. Every act of the melancholy fiasco 
reveals the King as he was, a mixture of weak- 
ness and obstinacy and shyness, with that ex- 
traordinary capacity for lying down under diffi- 
culties that has justly been called a "strenuous 
inertia," and the abhorrence of bloodshed, but for 



60 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

which he might have spared his own blood and 
that of thousands of his countrymen ; it equally 
reveals the Queen with her lack of judgment 
and her magnificent royal courage and devotion, 
and that curiously tragic obsession of hers that 
made her do almost invariably the wrong thing 
at the wrong time. 

It was Marie-Antoinette who, with the help 
of her devoted friend Comte Axel de Fersen, 
was responsible for arranging most of the details 
of the flight. Long before the date set for the 
departure, Fersen devoted himself, of course with 
the greatest secrecy, to making preparations of 
the most minute sort. He it was who ordered 
that great travelling carriage, the butt of so many 
historians ; he who ingeniously secured passports, 
and studied out, post by post, the route the royal 
family was to follow ; and he who consulted with 
the Marquis de Bouille and the Due de Choiseul 
about the placing of troops along the road. 
Every day, says M. Lenotre in his book on 
this subject {Le Drame de Vare7tnes), Fersen 
went to the Tuileries to attend himself to the 
tiniest details, and it was he who carried out 
surreptitiously under his arm, bit by bit, the 
clothes and linen which the Queen wished to 
take away with her. 

The day of the departure was at first fixed 
for June 6th, but a postponement was decided 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 61 

upon for various reasons, chiefly on account of 
a very democratic lady-in-waiting to the Dauphin, 
who, it was feared, might betray them, if they 
attempted to escape before her period of service 
terminated. Another cause of delay was that 
the King wished to secure before he left Paris 
the quarterly payment of his income due at 
that time. All in all about a fortnight was 
lost, and it was not till the 21st that they were 
finally ready to start. Meanwhile, the greatest 
precautions had been taken to keep their plan 
secret, and, beyond a few necessary confidants, 
no one suspected that the royal family was 
actually about to run away, although for some 
time past there had been rumours in Paris that 
they were contemplating flight. 

The day of the 20th was spent, outwardly, 
quite as usual, though inwardly the King and 
Queen and their few faithful friends were in a 
fever of impatience and anxiety. Fersen paid 
a final visit to the Tuileries and talked with 
Louis and Marie-Antoinette. All these were 
much afiected, and the Queen wept for a long 
time. Madame Royale, who has left a charm- 
ingly quaint memoir of the flight, written 
while she was still a child, gives an account 
of what she saw on the day preceding the 
departure : — 

*' During the whole of the 20th June," says 



62 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

she, ** my father and mother seemed very busy 
and much agitated, but I did not know the 
reason. After dinner they sent my brother and 
me into another room, and shut themselves up 
alone with my aunt (Madame Elisabeth). I 
have since learned it was then that they com- 
municated to her their intention to escape. At 
five o'clock my mother took my brother and 
me and two ladies to Tivoli. While walking 
there my mother took me aside, and told me 
not to be alarmed whatever might happen ; that 
we should never be long separated, and would 
meet again soon. My mind was confused, and 
I did not understand what she meant. She 
kissed me, and told me if those ladies should 
ask me why I was so much agitated, I should 
tell them she had scolded me, but that we had 
made it up again." 

During the day the Queen gave, as usual, 
her orders for the morrow, and so also did 
Madame de Tourzel, the only other person in 
the chateau who shared the confidence of the 
royal family. In the evening the family supped, 
as was their habit, in the company of Monsieur, 
the King's brother, and the Comtesse de Pro- 
vence, and at about ten o'clock, while the royal 
party was still talking, the Queen stole away to 
prepare her children for the flight. 

The Dauphin was sound asleep. Marie- 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 63 

Antoinette woke him gently, telling him he was 
to go to war, where he would command his 
regiment. No sooner did the boy hear this 
glowing promise than he jumped out of bed, 
crying enthusiastically, ** Quick! quick! let us 
hurry. Give me my sword and my boots, and 
let us go ! " His governess tells us that he felt 
he was about to enter on a career like that of 
Henri IV., a hero whom he had taken as his 
model, and that this idea so excited and charmed 
him that he scarcely shut his eyes during the 
whole of the journey to Varennes. 

The children were then taken down to the 
Queen's apartments, where Madame Royale was 
dressed in a costume that had been specially 
prepared for the occasion, and the Dauphin was 
disguised in girl's clothes, in which, according 
to his sister, he looked *' beautiful." The two 
children were evidendy very much astonished 
and confused. 

''What do you think we are going to do?" 
asked the young Princess of her brother ; and 
he answered, ** I suppose to act in a play, since 
we have got on these odd dresses." The poor 
little Dauphin must indeed have been in a sad 
state of bewilderment — waked in the night to be 
told he was going to the wars, and then, most 
inappropriately, to be dressed in a girl's frock. 
The combination of war and petticoats must 



64 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

certainly have seemed a painful paradox to his 
childish brain. 

At half-past ten the children were ready, 
and with Madame de Tourzel they left the 
chateau and met the Comte de Fersen, who 
had been waiting outside, since before nine 
o'clock, disguised as the driver of a public cab. 
The courtyard where they now found themselves 
was full of guards, and their danger was very 
great, yet they finally reached Fersen's cab in 
safety, and the children and their governess 
having got inside, the Swede mounted the box 
and drove away. Some time was spent in 
driving about the quays ; then they returned 
by the Rue St. Honore as far as the Rue de 
I'^^chelle, where Fersen stopped the carriage, 
and they waited for the rest of the royal family 
to join them. 

The delay was a long one, for, to avoid 
arousing suspicion, it was of course necessary 
for both the King and Queen to undress com- 
pletely and get into bed as usual, and then to 
get up and dress again. After the carriage had 
waited some time, Lafayette passed, escorted 
by torch-bearers. The governess, in her alarm, 
hid the Dauphin under her skirts. The child 
was thoroughly terrified, and thought that the 
people with torches wanted to kill him. 

Fersen, becoming worried at the delay, got 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 65 

down off his box and commenced walking about 
the carriage. His disguise was so perfect that 
he was able to deceive another coachman, who 
engaged him in conversation and accepted snuff 
from the Count's snuff-box. Presently Madame 
Elisabeth arrived, and in getting into the carriage 
stepped on the Dauphin, who was still lying in 
the bottom. He had the presence of mind, 
however, not to cry out. Madame Elisabeth 
was able to reassure the anxious children and 
governess by telling them all was well at the 
chateau, and that their flight had not been 
discovered. Not long afterwards the King 
arrived, and finally, at about midnight, the 
Queen joined them, and their party was com- 
plete. The first and most dangerous stage of 
the flight was passed in safety. The start had 
been made. 

After driving for some time, Fersen finally 
stopped the carriage at about two o'clock near 
the Barriere Saint-Martin, where it had been 
arranged that the big berlin, or travelling-car- 
riage, was to be waiting. To their intense dis- 
tress and anxiety, no signs of the carriage could 
be found. In the darkness — for it was a black 
night — the royal family saw their plans checked 
at the start by the failure of the great berlin 
to keep its appointment. The King, despite 
their protests, insisted on getting out to look 



66 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

for the missing carriage, and at last, after many 
agonised moments, it was found farther along 
the road. Quickly the royal party transferred 
themselves from the cab to the berlin, Fersen 
placed himself on the box, between the body- 
guards who had been selected to take part in 
the flight, and they were off. 

This great berlin in which the royal family 
was now installed has probably met with more 
abuse than any other inanimate object in history. 
It had been ordered a long time before, through 
the agency of Fersen, who pretended it was 
wanted for use by some Russian, since to have 
ordered so elaborate a vehicle without explana- 
tion would have aroused suspicion. An idea 
of how imposing and complicated an affair it 
was may be gathered from the fact that the 
items in the bill for it — given in M. Bimbenet's 
book on the flight to Varennes — take up more 
than six printed pages. It contained all manner 
of contrivances and conveniences for travelling 
— indeed, some one or other once said of it that 
all it lacked to make it complete was a cathedral 
and an opera-house. It must be borne in mind, 
however, before entirely condemning the royal 
family for attracting dangerous attention to them- 
selves by choosing such a carriage, that it was 
necessary to have a comfortable conveyance, if 
delicate women and little children were to travel 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 67 

in it for several days, and also that a less 
solidly built coach would have been liable to 
frequent accidents. But these considerations are 
far from excusing the choice of the cumbersome 
and conspicuous berlin — the first of the many 
mistakes made in the course of the flight. 

The list of these mistakes is a long and a 
sad one. Perhaps the greatest of all lay in the 
neglect to take along with them some experienced 
and resourceful man to manage affairs and cap- 
tain the expedition. Fersen left them at Bondy, 
near Paris, and after that the King, himself 
unsuited to manage anything, and the three 
bodyguards, brave men but unused to com- 
mand, were left in charge of affairs, with the 
most disastrous of results. The King's advisers 
had suggested that one M. d'Agout should 
accompany the royal family, but this advice was 
disregarded, on the plea that Madame de Tourzel 
claimed it as her right never to be separated 
from the Dauphin. The governess made it 
afterwards in her memoirs a particular point to 
deny that she had set up any such claim, and 
Croker, in one of his ** Essays on the French 
Revolution," advances the opinion that Louis 
had merely made use of the lady's name, and 
that the real reason he declined M. d'Agout's 
services was that his amotcr-propre made 
him jealous of seeming in leading-strings, and 



68 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

unable to manage so simple a thing as a few 
days' journey in a coach. The fact is, however, 
that the presence of a competent man accus- 
tomed to rise to emergencies, instead of sitting 
down underneath them, as Louis did, might 
have saved the expedition. Still another error 
of the arrangements was the selection of the 
bodyguards to act as couriers, work to which 
they were unused, and in the performance of 
which their inexperience caused confusion and 
also attracted undue notice and suspicion. 

But the royal family were quite unaware of 
all the unpromising circumstances which sur- 
rounded their enterprise, and established com- 
fortably inside the unlucky berlin, were full of 
hope and good spirits. 

''When we have passed Chalons," said the 
King confidently, " we shall have nothing more 
to fear." And the whole party, says Lenotre, 
felt, after the two melancholy and constricted 
years just past, as if they were going off on a 
holiday. 

They distributed the roles in accordance with 
the passport Fersen had managed to secure for 
them. It was made out in the name of Madame 
de Korff, 'a Russian lady, and it was arranged 
that Madame de Tourzel should assume the 
part of the Russian, that the King should be 
her steward, Madame Elisabeth her companion, 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 69 

Rosalie, and that the Dauphin and his sister 
should be her two little girls, Amelie and Aglae. 
The Queen was to be their governess. One 
can picture Marie-Antoinette's pleasure at this 
bit of comedy-acting, a reminiscence of her 
happy days at Versailles. 

They ate their breakfast like picnickers, off 
bits of bread, lacking plates and forks, chuckling 
the while at the thought of the dismay Paris 
must be feeling at the discovery of their escape. 
From time to time the King had the imprudence 
to get out of the carriage, and even to talk to 
people in the road ; and once Madame de 
Tourzel got out with the Dauphin and Madame 
Royale and walked up a hill, to give the children 
a little change from the long confinement in the 
carriage. At Chaintrix they were recognised 
by the postmaster while the horses were being 
changed, and he and his family overwhelmed 
them with homage. Finally, at about four in 
the afternoon, they arrived at Chalons, the point 
which would, according to Louis, mark the end 
of their dangers. Curiously enough it proved 
to be the point where the dangers commenced. 

At Pont-de-Somme-Vesle, the next post- 
station after Chalons, it had been arranged that 
the royal berlin should be met by the first of a 
series of detachments of cavalry, which was to 
await it along the route and act as an escort to 



70 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Montmedy. These plans had been laid with the 
most minute care, and it is to the failure of the 
troops to connect with the King that must be 
laid the blame for the whole disaster. The 
detachment at Pont-de-Somme-Vesle was under 
the command of the Due de Choiseul, and, by 
what seems astonishing stupidity, he failed in 
his mission. Alarmed by the excitement his 
soldiers caused in the village, and fearing from 
the delay in the arrival of the royal party that 
they had been prevented from leaving Paris at 
all, or had been stopped on the road, he took 
his troops away, leaving not even a single man 
to report matters to the King should he arrive. 

Naturally, the royal fugitives were greatly 
upset to find no soldiers awaiting them, and 
time was lost in waiting in the hope of their 
arrival. Finally, however, they went on, full 
of anxiety and not knowing what catastrophes 
this failure of the troops might presage. At 
the next stopping-place, Sainte-Menehould, one 
of the bodyguards aroused suspicion by not 
knowing where the posthouse was, and Drouet, 
the intensely Jacobin postmaster, recognised 
the King from his resemblance to a portrait on 
the assignats (paper-notes). By this recogni- 
tion, Drouet, as Napoleon said years afterwards, 
** changed the face of the world." 

Full of republican zeal and desire to distinguish 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 71 

himself, Drouet followed the royal berlin on 
horseback, intending to interrupt the flight at 
Clermont, the next post-station. For this he 
was, however, too late, but, by taking a short 
cut, he was able to reach Varennes almost as 
soon as the coach ; and here at Varennes, a 
little town so insignificant that Paris had never 
heard its name, a place only a few miles from 
the frontier, where danger might reasonably be 
supposed to be at an end, the full force of the 
misfortunes which had gradually been accumulat- 
ing ever since Choiseul's defection, burst upon 
the heads of the escaping royalty. Victor Hugo 
said that \h^ place at Varennes had the shape of 
the blade of the guillotine beneath which three 
of the party were destined to die. 

Night had come on, and notwithstanding the 
uneasiness of the travellers every one in the 
carriage had dropped into a doze. Suddenly, 
says Madame Royale, they were awakened by 
a jolt, the carriage stopped, and one of the 
bodyguards came to tell them they had reached 
Varennes, but there were no relays of horses 
to be found. As it chanced, Varennes had no 
regular posthouse, and so horses had always to 
be provided specially in advance. This had, of 
course, been attended to, and if the troops had 
met the royal berlin according to arrangements, 
word must have been given in what part of the 



72 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

town the relay would be found. That no such 
word had come was merely the outcome of 
another mistake among so many that the his- 
torian has hardly courage for the gloomy task 
of naming them all. 

The little town slept. One householder, 
knocked up out of his bed, could give no 
information as to where the horses might be 
found. The postillions from Clermont declined 
positively to overwork their horses by taking 
them any farther. It was a situation full of 
peril. Finally, the postillions were prevailed 
upon to drive on to the farthest inn in Varennes, 
there to give the horses time to rest. The 
berlin started on again slowly. 

Suddenly there were heard shouts of ** Stop! 
stop ! " combined with threats to shoot if the 
carriage went any farther. The postillions were 
seized and dragged to the ground, and in a 
moment the berlin was surrounded by a crowd 
of excited villagers, some with arms, some with 
lanterns. They asked who the travellers were, 
and received the reply that they were '* Madame 
de Korjff and her family," but the crowd was un- 
convinced. Drouet had given the alarm, and 
the village knew Madame de Korffs family was 
in reality the King and Queen and the little 
Dauphin. Lights were thrust into the carriage 
close to Louis's face, and the travellers were com- 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 73 

manded to alight. There was a moment's demur, 
and the guns of the crowd were levelled on the 
carriage. Helpless, the royal family got out into 
the street, and made their way to the shop of 
Sauce, the grocer-mayor of the town, who politely 
put his establishment at their disposal. 

Tragedy and farce, by one of Fate's common 
ironies, combined ; — inside the shop Marie-Antoi- 
nette, the proudest of queens, seated amongst the 
parcels of soap and candles, pleaded with the wife 
of the humble country grocer that she should try 
to influence her husband to permit the flight of 
the King and his family. The picture is one 
that should make the poor Queen's friends at 
the same time cry and laugh. 

In an upstairs room in Sauce's house the royal, 
family established themselves. The Dauphin 
and his sister were put to bed, and, overcome 
with fatigue after travelling for twenty-four hours, 
they immediately fell asleep. The calm slumber 
of the little children formed a heartrending con- 
trast to the agitation of their unhappy parents. 
The ''Madame de Korff" fiction had by that 
time been abandoned, the King had declared 
himself for what he was, and had set himself to 
talking frankly with Sauce about the causes of 
his flight and what he proposed to do. Lenotre 
makes the assertion, not very astonishing, in con- 
sideration of the quaintly bourgeois character of 



74 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Louis, that the King found in the grocer a con- 
genial soul with whom he could discuss the affairs 
of his kingdom without constraint. 

Meanwhile the Due de Choiseul and his men, 
who had failed to meet the berlin at Pont-de- 
Somme-Vesle, had arrived at Varennes, and could 
without doubt have helped the royal family to 
escape and continue their journey, if Louis had 
been able to behave with ordinary human energy. 
This he did not do, however, preferring to wait 
in the hope of being allowed to depart peace- 
fully, or of being relieved by Bouille and his 
troops, who were not far away. A more incom- 
petent collection of people, it would be difficult 
to imagine : the King, with his customary fear 
of bloodshed, not daring to use force ; the officers 
afraid to act without his authorisation ; and even 
the usually so courageous Queen intimidated by 
fatigue — no one seeming able to realise the situa- 
tion, and no one showing the moral strength to 
take any action ; while on the grocer's bed the 
little Dauphin slept, and minute by minute his 
kingdom slipped away from him. 

Presently there arrived messengers from Paris, 
who had been despatched as soon as the King's 
escape was discovered, with directions to arrest 
his flight. 

When the King had read the decree of the 
Assembly, with which these messengers were 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 75 

armed, he exclaimed, ** There is no longer any 
King in France ! " and laid down the paper on 
the bed where the children were sleeping. Marie- 
Antoinette, with her fine impetuosity, caught it 
up furiously and flung it on the ground. '* It 
shall not sully my children!" she cried, and though 
the words were far from tactful, it is inspiring to 
see such energy in the midst of so much lacka- 
daisical inertia. 

The rest of the night passed sadly for the 
King and Queen, and while the children slept 
their parents must gradually have come to realise 
the hopelessness of their situation. Crowds of 
excited peasants from the surrounding country 
kept pouring into Varennes, and demanding at 
the top of their voices that the royal family 
should return to Paris. The messengers from 
the Assembly urged the same course. Bouille 
with his troops did not appear. In vain the 
Queen pointed to her sleeping children, who 
needed rest, and one of the party simulated a 
sudden attack of illness to delay the departure. 
The populace was inexorable. " They had hearts 
of bronze," says Madame de Tourzel, ** moved 
alone by fear." Finally, at about eight in the 
morning, the royal family, in despair, got again 
into their great berlin and set off, heavy-hearted, 
for Paris. An hour and a half later, Bouille with 
his relief party reached Varennes. 



76 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

The journey from Varennes to Paris was to 
the royal family, and especially to the Dauphin 
and his sister, a long torture, mental and physical. 
More than three times as long was consumed in 
returning as had been taken to come from Paris, 
this because the national guard of Varennes and 
the other towns the royal prisoners passed through 
insisted on accompanying them on foot, and 
the carriage was therefore forced to progress at 
a foot-pace. The weather was scorchingly hot, 
and the dense crowds of curious peasants who 
escorted the carriage pressed about it so closely 
as to shut out what air there was, and to raise an 
intolerable dust They insisted, moreover, that 
the windows of the berlin should remain open, so 
that they might gaze without hindrance at their 
humiliated sovereigns. From time to time there 
rose up insulting cries of " Vive la nation!'' — 
a rude adaptation of the old-fashioned greet- 
ing, *' Vive le roif' It was in the midst of this 
unsympathetic mob that the exhausted and dis- 
appointed family were driven in the sweltering 
heat till they reached Chalons. 

This town had not forgotten the loyalty it 
had expressed in 1770, when Marie- Antoinette, 
as a young archduchess, had halted there on 
her first journey into France, and to commemo- 
rate her visit a memorial arch had been erected 
bearing the inscription, '' May this monument 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 77 

endure as long as our love." At Chalons, for 
the first time since they left Varennes, the royal 
family was treated with kindness and cordiality; 
there were illuminations ; young girls came for- 
ward and presented baskets of flowers to the 
Queen, and for the first time since they left 
the Tuileries the whole family slept in beds. 
The loyal Chalonais even proposed plans of 
escape, but, as had happened before at Varennes, 
and was destined to happen again at Dormans, 
the King declined. The royal family would have 
liked to stop here and rest a little, but the 
mob that had accompanied the carriage became 
alarmed at the sympathetic attitude of Chalons, 
and sent to Reims for a body of roughs, who, 
having marched all night, arrived about ten next 
morning, rendered quite irresponsible by fatigue, 
heat, and wine. They burst in upon the King, 
who was at Mass (for it was the day of the Fete- 
Dieu), and demanded with the greatest coarse- 
ness of expression that he and his family should 
leave immediately for Paris. 

At 6pernay, where the cavalcade stopped for 
dinner, the mob was particularly cruel. Some one 
in the crowd said, loud enough for Madame de 
Tourzel to hear it, ** Hide me, so I can fire at 
the Queen without any one knowing whence the 
shot comes." But evidently the man's courage 
failed him, for no shot followed. As they got 



78 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

out of the carriage one of the bodyguards 
picked up the Dauphin to carry him, and the 
poor little Prince, losing sight for a moment 
of his parents, commenced to cry bitterly. The 
physical privations of the journey had been a 
great strain on the child, and young as he was 
he could not but understand that some terrible 
misfortune had happened. When the time came 
for the royal family to leave Epernay, the mob 
had worked itself up into a rage, and the passage 
to the berlin was made with considerable danger. 
The people wished to detain the governess, and 
she was saved with much difficulty from the 
furious crowd. 

It is Madame de Tourzel who tells of an 
incident that occurred during this part of the 
journey. Some of the mob surrounding the 
carriage complained of hunger, and the Queen 
offered them some meat. '' Beware of it ! " cried 
some one. '' It is probably poisoned." At this 
Marie-Antoinette, indignant, offered some of the 
meat to the Dauphin and Madame Royale and 
ate some herself. 

At a point beyond Epernay, the crowd at- 
tempted to kill a cur^y who had aroused their 
suspicions by drawing near the carriage to speak 
to the King. His life was saved, however, by 
Barnave, one of the members of the Assembly 
who had been sent from Paris to meet the royal 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 79 

party and had just joined them. Barnave hung 
out of the window in his anxiety to pacify 
the murderous mob, while Madame Elisabeth, 
alarmed for his safety, clutched him by the 
skirts of his coat. The Queen confided after- 
wards to Madame Campan that, with her usual 
capacity for seeing the humorous side of even 
the most serious things, she could hardly forbear 
to laugh at the ludicrous sight of the pious 
Elisabeth holding Barnave by his coat-tails. 

The behaviour of Barnave and of Petion, 
the two Assembly members who. rode in the 
carriage, furnishes an interesting contrast. Bar- 
nave treated the unfortunate royalty with respect 
and consideration; on the other hand. Potion 
was incredibly rude and ill-mannered, and even 
had the fatuity to imagine Madame Elisabeth 
had fallen in love with him. His absurd account 
of this episode in his memoirs is one of the few 
bright spots in the melancholy chronicles of this 
unhappy expedition. 

The Dauphin was evidently much pleased 
with both of these men. He climbed off his 
mother's knee to go to them, and asked them 
quantities of childish questions. He was par- 
ticularly interested in the buttons on Barnave's 
coat, on which there was something written, and 
was delighted when he had spelled out the 
legend, '' Live free, or die." This sentence he 



80 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

repeated over and over as he discovered it on 
one button after another. 

The night was passed at Dormans, where the 
noise in the city was so great it was almost 
impossible to close eyes. Cries of ** Vive la 
Nation I Vive r Assemblh nationale ! " com- 
menced with the dawn, and made such an 
impression on the sleeping Dauphin that he 
dreamed he was in a wood with wolves, and 
that the Queen was in danger. He woke in 
tears, and could not be comforted until they 
carried him to his mother. Seeing she was 
indeed safe, he let himself be put to bed again, 
and slept quietly till it was time to go. 

Finally, at six o'clock on Saturday morning, 
the 25th June, the royal family started on the 
last stage of their journey to Paris. At Claye 
the enraged mob wished to make itself the ex- 
clusive guard of the King, and there was con- 
siderable excitement. It even seemed at one 
time as if there might be a sort of miniature 
battle around the carriage. The heat was so 
great that some of the crowd near the berlin 
felt ill, and had to be revived with salts, while 
the dust was as thick as a cloud. 

In the afternoon they reached the outskirts 
of Paris, where a huge concourse was waiting. 
Every one, by special order, kept his head covered, 
and it had also been ordered that profound silence 



FLIGHT TO VARENNES 81 

should be maintained. These orders were strictly- 
observed, and some ragamuffins without hats even 
went so far as to cover their heads with hand- 
kerchiefs. In the streets there were placarded 
notices, saying : — 

" Whoever applauds the King will be beaten. 
Whoever insults him will be hanged." 

• At last, late in the afternoon, the cavalcade 
reached the Tuileries, and with feelings that 
must have been of mingled relief and de- 
spair, the royal family entered the chateau, which 
they were not destined to leave until they went 
from it to go to prison. As they got out of 
the carriage one of the national guards, to the 
Dauphin's distress and alarm, snatched him out 
of the arms of M. Hue, that most faithful of 
royal friends, who had come forward to receive 
his little master. 

A moment later he and his family were again 
established in the Tuileries, and this most melan- 
choly and ill-fated episode was at an end. It 
would be irnpossible to contradict the statement 
of Croker that ''such a series of fatal accidents 
all tending to one point cannot be paralleled in 
the history of unfortunate princes." 

It is said that the flight to Varennes caused 
Marie-Antoinette's hair to turn white as that of 
a woman of seventy. Certain it is that it brought 



82 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

about something of far greater and sadder 
importance. It was the determining point in 
the downfall of royalty. ;The Dauphin left the 
Tuileries on the night of the 20th the heir- 
apparent of the French throne ; he returned on 
the 25th the prospective prisoner of the Temple. 



CHAPTER VI 

A LAST YEAR OF FREEDOM 

TO the eyes of Prince Louis-Charles, the year 
which immediately followed the flight to 
Varennes seemed much like that which preceded 
it. His world was bounded by a chateau that 
was guarded like a prison, by a royal state 
diminished to the shadow of its former self, by 
a Queen-mother who wept often — we all know 
the story of the woman who, receiving alms 
from the Dauphin, said, " Now I shall be happy 
as a queen," and how the child answered, '' Happy 
as a queen ? I know a queen who weeps every 
day" — all these things, then, existed in 1792 
much as they had in 1791. Perhaps the guards 
had grown a little more vigorous, Marie-Antoi- 
nette's tears may have fallen even faster, but to 
the childish mind life looked much the same as 
it had ever since the first move to the Tuileries. 
The twelve months from the Varennes fiasco to 
the July following were the Dauphin's last good 
days. With them ended his freedom and his 
childhood, after them followed the sad romance 



84 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

of the Temple, that tragedy which gave him, 
when barely ten years old, such a life to look 
back on as has been lived by no other character 
in history. It was to these happy days that the 
unfortunate little Prince's memory used to turn 
in the midst of his subsequent miseries, and to 
these days attaches all the pathos that is always 
connected with the doing of things for the last 
time. 

In June 1791, immediately on the forced return 
from Varennes, the King was temporarily sus- 
pended from power while an inquiry was held in 
the Assembly as to whether he should be put 
on trial for his flight, and whether this flight 
could be considered in the light of a crime. 
It was finally decided that no trial should be 
held. During this period of royal suspension, 
the position of the Dauphin and his family was 
most uncomfortable and alarming ; uncomfortable 
because they were kept in a condition which was 
captivity in all but name, alarming because of 
the uncertainty of their fate and the dangerously 
excited state of the people. All sorts of means 
were employed by interested parties to arouse 
the common folk against the Bourbons ; money 
was distributed, impassioned harangues were 
delivered in the streets, and indecent caricatures 
and songs were set under the eyes and ears of 
all who walked about the city. 










o5 












A LAST YEAR OF FREEDOM 85 

Confined in the midst of such a people, the 
state of the royal family was by no means an 
enviable one. They were unable to go outside 
for air and exercise, because they did not wish 
to submit to the humiliation of appearing in 
public as prisoners, nor to expose themselves 
to the insults of the wrought-up populace. Shut 
up in the stifling midsummer heat of the chateau, 
a prey to every anxiety and depression, the King 
and Queen and Madame Elisabeth were acutely 
miserable in mind and body, and found practi- 
cally their only distraction in watching the games 
of the Dauphin and his sister, who played to- 
gether in cheerful ignorance of the unhappiness 
they were too young to notice. 

In the meantime, discussions were going on 
•in the Assembly concerning the treatment which 
the nation ought to accord to its runaway King. 
Some persons, with a feeling in which it is not alto- 
gether impossible to sympathise, thought that, by 
leaving the capital surreptitiously as he had done, 
Louis had forfeited his right to be ruler of France. 
These persons regarded a king as they might 
any other paid public official. He had run away 
from his duties without giving notice, and there- 
fore was it not expecting a good deal for him 
to hope to find his berth waiting for him when 
he was brought back again? After much talk 
it was at last determined, however, that Louis's 



86 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

suspension should last only till the new constitu- 
tion should be prepared, and that it should cease 
as soon as he should give this constitution his 
acceptance. Should he at any time retract this 
acceptance, he would be considered to have 
abdicated, and would become in the eyes of 
France no more than a mere private citizen. 

Durinof this time Madame de Tourzel had 
been kept under confinement in the Tuileries 
because of her share in the royal family's escape. 
She was now interrogated formally and with 
much consideration, and shortly after this the 
discomfort of her position was modified ; guards 
no longer spent the night in her room, and she 
was permitted to be with the royal family again. 
Up till then, the Dauphin had not even been 
allowed to look at his governess if he met her 
in one of the rooms of the palace. This curious 
behaviour evidently mystified the child, and per- 
haps led him to think the good lady had done 
something of which he ought to disapprove. 
When at last he was allowed to be with her 
again, this bewilderment of his kept him from 
treating her as cordially as he might have 
done. Madame de Tourzel asked him reproach- 
fully if this was how he should treat some 
one who had suffered only because she had 
showed her devotion and faithfulness to the 
King. ''What," she asked, "will your dear 



A LAST YEAR OF FREEDOM 87 

Pauline, whom you talk of so often, think of 
your conduct ? " 

The little boy blushed, and threw himself 
shamefacedly into his governess's arms. ** For- 
give me ! " he cried. '' I have been very naughty. 
Please do not tell Pauline, for it would make her 
stop loving me." Madame de Tourzel promised 
as he wished, and after that Louis-Charles over- 
whelmed her with little caresses and attentions 
'' to make her forget his naughtiness." 

This Pauline, whose threatened disapproval 
was so alarming to the Dauphin, was Madame 
de Tourzel's daughter, a young girl of seventeen, 
for whom he had a tremendous affection. Her 
youth, in the midst of the many saddened older 
people who surrounded him, inspired him with 
confidence, and his fondness for her grew to 
be one of those quaint little romantic attach- 
ments which small boys so often feel for young 
girls. It is said that his miniature jealous rage 
if he suspected she preferred some other person 
to himself was highly amusing to his family. 
Once he went to her mother with a very 
serious face, and said he had a great favour 
to ask, and that she must promise to grant it. 
** I am six now," said he earnestly, ''and when 
I am seven I shall go into the charge of a 
tutor. Promise me you will not marry Pauline 
to any one until then. It would be so dreadful 



88 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

if she should leave me. No, no, you will not 
refuse to keep my dear Pauline for me." The 
promise was given, and the six-year-old Prince 
nipped in the bud any matrimonial plans which 
Pauline or her mother may have been cherishing 
for the moment. 

Meantime, during these weeks of royal humilia- 
tion, the new constitution was being prepared, 
and finally, early in September, it was ready 
and was submitted to Louis, who, after long 
consideration of it, went to the Assembly to 
give it his formal acceptance. The Dauphin, 
who by one of its articles was for the second 
time deprived of his graceful title, to be called 
thereafter merely the Prince-Royal, went with 
his mother and Madame Royale to watch the 
ceremony from a box. It was a very curious 
affair, and typical of the spirit of the times. 
At first the King stood, his head uncovered, 
to deliver his oath ; suddenly he noticed, to his 
astonishment and indignation, that he alone of 
all the Assembly was standing. Immediately 
Louis seated himself and finished his oath in 
his chair. The President of the Assembly lis- 
tened in the least respectful manner he could 
think of, being seated in his arm-chair with 
his legs crossed, and when he came to make 
his reply to Louis, his tone was insolent. 

Afterwards, there was held public rejoicings 



A LAST YEAR OF FREEDOM 89 

in honour of the constitution ; there were illu- 
minations and fireworks, and at eleven in the 
evening the King and Queen and their children 
drove about Paris in a carriage. Despite its 
magnificence and gaiety, however, there was 
no real joyousness about this fete ; the populace 
was not in a state of mind to enjoy harmless 
fireworks, and the Court was too depressed to 
take much pleasure in what must have seemed 
rather like a prisoners' outing. Even Louis- 
Charles, despite the novelty of a midnight drive 
amid the lights and the crowd, seemed infected 
by the universal presentiment of evil and took 
no real pleasure in the fke. 

These joyless rejoicings over, the old routine 
settled down again upon the Dauphin's life — 
for though the new constitution had tried to 
cheat the boy of the title borne by the eldest 
princes of the royal family for more than four 
centuries, it was still as the Dauphin that France 
spoke and thought of him. The cloud under 
which royalty had rested for the past weeks 
had passed over him practically unnoticed. For 
example, missing one of the two ladies who had 
taken part, in a separate carriage, in the flight, 
and had been temporarily kept in confinement 
as had been Madame de Tourzel, he asked 
what had happened to his bonne. He was told 
she had gone to the country to visit her mother, 



90 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

an explanation which he accepted quite unsus- 
piciously. Being set at liberty, the lady re- 
turned to his service. "It is a long time since 
I have seen you," said he, *' but I do not blame 
you. In your place I should have stayed even 
longer " — and, to emphasise his meaning, he ran 
and kissed his own mother, who was standing 
near. 

On the occasion of his first visit to the 
Tuileries garden after a confinement indoors, 
which had been particularly trying to the active 
little boy, he was so interested in watching a 
flock of birds in a tree that, walking along by 
Marie-Antoinette's side, his. neck craned back- 
wards, he tumbled into a little hole in the grass. 
This amused him very much and reminded him 
of the experience of the astrologer in La Fon- 
taine's fable, the first lines of which he repeated 
to his mother forthwith : — 

" A deep astrologer, so thoughtful, fell 
Down to the bottom of a well — 
' Blockhead who could not keep his feet,' they said, 
' Did he pretend to read it overhead ? ' " 

The constitution had spoken of a law which 
was to be made regulating the education of the 
prospective heir to the throne. Nothing was 
done about this, however, and when the royal 
confinement was at an end, Abbe dAvaux 



A LAST YEAR OF FREEDOM 91 

took up his duties again. Full of activity and 
energy, the child was quite as eager at his 
lessons as at his games. He learned Italian 
at his own wish, because the Queen sometimes 
talked in it, and, romantically attached as he 
was to his fascinating Queen-mother, he had 
a childish jealousy of any of her accomplishments 
in which he could not share. It is evident, from 
a sample of his handwriting which has been 
preserved, that the boy was well advanced in 
his studies. He also commenced during this 
year to learn Latin. Notwithstanding all this 
education, however, he appears to have pre- 
served his old fault of character, and one of 
the phrases in his childish copy-books was, " I 
know a prince who gets angry very easily." 
When these rages' had spent themselves the 
Dauphin would be very much ashamed of him- 
self, and, oppressed to an amusing extent by 
the royal dignity he had forgotten, would say 
tearfully, '' What will the world think of me ? " 
and would beg those who had witnessed his 
weakness not to speak of it to any one. 

Louis-Charles was now nearly seven years 
old, at which age it was customary for Bourbon 
princes to leave the charge of women and go 
into that of men. It was to this custom that 
the Dauphin referred when he asked that his 
sweetheart Pauline might remain unmarried till 



92 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

his birthday. It therefore became necessary to 
choose a tutor. Heretofore this choice had, 
of course, rested with the King, but the Govern- 
ment now wished to take it from him, and to 
name the tutor themselves. That this wish to 
oust the King from the direction of his son's 
education was not likely to appeal to Louis it 
is easy to understand, but, on the other hand, it 
is not impossible to sympathise with the opposing 
point of view, and with the popular desire to 
have a controlling share in moulding the senti- 
ments of a child whose future would — as things 
then stood — mean so much to France. Some 
eighty ambitious candidates for the post were 
proposed to the Assembly, a collection of the 
most unsuitable people imaginable, and the 
ridicule with which this list' was greeted seems 
more or less to have killed the Assembly's 
wish to choose the tutor. It has been said 
that Robespierre desired the place, and that his 
subsequent sanctioning of the choice of Simon 
as the child's " instructor " was a sort of ven- 
geance because his pretensions were ignored. 
This, however, is more likely fable than fact. 

Meantime the King had made his own choice, 
and the inappropriateness of it must have proved 
to the Assembly how right they had been in 
wishing to have a directing hand in the matter. 
The new tutor was M. de Fleurieu, whom even 



A LAST YEAR OF FREEDOM 93 

the most ardent royalists acknowledge to have 
been a person of weak character, though of 
much devotion and education. Moreover, he 
had very unsuitable family connections, having 
contracted a low marriage, which he kept secret 
till the choice was made. His wife was an 
illegitimate daughter of Madame de Pompadour's 
husband by a woman of evil reputation, and 
was by birth and upbringing an improper person 
to be associated with the man into whose care 
was to be given the heir of France. No wonder 
there was grumbling, just as there had been 
at the time when the Children of France were 
given to the charge of '* la Polignac." In this 
case the disapproved tutor never entered upon 
his duties ; the matter remained in suspense, 
and the Dauphin's education went on as it had 
before. 

Meanwhile, the kingdom was become more and 
more upset, and the royal family was in frequent 
danger. All the danger did not come from 
without the palace. In the winter, after the 
Varennes journey, there was appointed as pastry- 
cook at the Tuileries a man whom Madame 
Campan calls *'a furious Jacobin," and the fear 
was well founded that he might make use of 
his opportunities to poison the royal family. All 
sorts of elaborate precautions were taken to avoid 
eating what he had made. It was arranged 



94 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

that they should deprive themselves entirely of 
pastry, except when Madame Campan smuggled 
it in for them. To prevent any one knowing 
of these royal fears, the suspected food was 
broken on the plates, so that it might seem as 
if it had been eaten. 

These dangers and troubles depressed Louis 
very much. It is said that at one time he 
passed ten consecutive days without uttering a 
single word, even in the bosom of his family, 
except at the time of his daily backgammon 
game with his sister. At such a time, the 
Dauphin's presence in the family did much to 
keep them from absolute despondency. From 
what we hear of Madame Royale, she was not 
exactly a lively child. Indeed, one of her con- 
temporaries wrote of her that she was even in 
her earliest childhood of so sad a countenance 
that people of her acquaintance called her 
'' Mousseline la Serieuse." It is not likely, 
therefore, that she did much to increase the 
gaiety of her unhappy parents. The Dauphin's 
services in this direction cannot, however, be 
exaggerated ; in two ways he helped the poor 
King and Queen : in the first place, because 
for his sake they were forced to pretend to a 
certain cheerfulness, and also because his childish 
foolinof made them smile even in their saddest 
moments. 



A LAST YEAR OF FREEDOM 95 

Of the many public events of this busy year 
some few only touched the life of the Dauphin. 
Undoubtedly he shared in the consternation 
which the assassination of the King of Sweden 
caused to a king who was himself in constant 
danger of a similar fate. Another incident which 
came before the notice of the child was con- 
nected with the forty deserting Swiss soldiers 
and the celebration in honour of their liberation. 
Taking up a collection in Paris to pay the ex- 
penses of this fete, they had the audacity to 
make application at the Tuileries for subscrip- 
tions, and the gentleman whose business it was 
to attend to such requests lacked the courage 
in such dangerous times to decline to give. 
Hearing of this, Louis was much annoyed, and 
reproached the gentleman warmly for his base- 
ness, but finally forgave him for what was a 
mistake, not a crime. The Dauphin, who had 
overheard the conversation, was furious at this 
cowardly behaviour on the part of the valet de 
chambre. 

"What will the public say when they hear 
we have given money to these wicked folk ? " 
he asked Madame de Tourzel indignantly. 
** If I had been in papa's place, I should have 
sent the gentleman away and would never 
have looked at him again." It was at such 
moments as this that Louis - Charles, child 



96 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

though he was, showed himself to be twice as 
much of a man as his father. Had he, grown 
to man's estate, been the King, and good, un- 
energetic Louis the Dauphin, the whole history 
of Europe would have been changed ; for it 
cannot be denied that, in producing the great 
Revolution, the character of Louis had quite as 
important an influence as the condition of the 
French people. Revolt hung wavering at the top 
of a hill — poor Louis, instead of holding it back, 
gave it the foolish, unintentional push that sent 
it rushing down to overwhelm France. What 
might have happened if, instead of Louis, a 
mature Louis-Charles had dealt with the revolt 
no one can more than guess. To hazard this 
guess — futile though it is — opens an interesting 
vista of what-might-have-beens. 

In the first place, it is interesting to wonder 
what sort of man Louis-Charles would have 
grown to. Here we have a child, the details 
of whose life are recounted for us by a score 
of eye-witnesses of various prejudices, a child 
at whose most extraordinary and self-revealing 
career we can look back after a century with 
the detachment that time's perspective gives 
us. Considering, then, the childish character 
Louis-Charles showed during the ten years of 
his life, it is not altogether absurd to form some 
vague conclusions how that character would 



A LAST YEAR OF FREEDOM 97 

have developed had he been spared from the 
tragedy of the Temple, and to picture for our- 
selves the man that might have been. 

There is little doubt he would have been 
strong and good-looking, a handsome Bourbon 
with a will of his own — ^ kingly Bourbon, too, 
no bourgeois royalty like his father. He would 
have been strong in mind as well as body, set 
in his determinations, rather obstinate perhaps, 
and, though kind to those he cared for, not a 
superlatively soft-hearted monarch like Louis, 
nor a king much given to sentimental or ima- 
ginative thought about the people. We fancy 
he would have regarded the people from the 
true old-fashioned royal point of view, as part 
of the machinery, one of the legs of his throne, 
an order to whom individually he would show 
the greatest generosity and consideration, but 
for whom collectively he had little thought or 
interest. 

A revolution, had it come in his reign rather 
than his father's, would have met with slight 
encouragement ; he would promptly have put 
it down, or else would have perished in the 
attempt. We cannot imagine him shilly- 
shallying, making concessions, refusing to spill 
blood, or to take risks, accepting revolutionary 
constitutions because he dared not decline, and 
drawing back from them because he could not 
7 



98 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

carry them out. We can picture him slaying 
the revolution in open fight, or himself dying 
in the struggle ; we cannot see him submitting 
to imprisonment and trial and death from his 
own subjects. Personally, he would have been 
a man socially competent, which Louis never 
was — a man ardent in his emotions, quick and 
passionate in love and anger, proud, intolerant 
of disrespect, convinced of his divine right — in 
short, the typical romantic figure of royalty, a 
real Bourbon king. 

It is, then, in view of all this half-guessed, 
half-deduced unfolding of his character that the 
intrigues of the spring of 1792 are particularly 
noteworthy and interesting, unproductive though 
they were of any tangible results. These 
intrigues had for their end no less a project 
than that of setting the Dauphin on the throne 
of France in place of his father — a project fore- 
shadowed as long before as the autumn of 

1 79 1, when, as the Dauphin took his walks 
in the Tuileries gardens, people cried, ** Long 
live our little King!" — to the delight of the 
child, who did not understand, and the dismay 
of his suite, who understood only too well. Let 
us quote a letter written by Louis on May 29, 

1792, to his brother, the Comte de Provence, 
then a refugee abroad : — 



A LAST YEAR OF FREEDOM 99 

*' The audacity of the factionists, my dear 
brother, is absolutely unbridled," writes Louis 
— but we must bear in mind that his point 
of view, necessarily prejudiced, must not be 
accepted without question. *' The most absurd 
propositions have been made to me to abdi- 
cate the crown. If I give in to this pretended 
measure of public safety, they will proclaim my 
son King of the French, a Council of regency 
will preside over everything until his majority, 
and will sign in his name. If I acquiesce, they 
will leave me freedom to live wherever I like, 
even outside the realm. They will leave me 
the possession of all my inherited property, with 
a stipend of five millions, of which two will go 
to the Queen when I die. These propositions 
have been made to me by a man whom I could 
name to you, and who is the soul of this society 
which by now has undermined the edifice built 
by the centuries. Anonymous letters come to 
me from all directions. They tell me that we are 
coming to a time of tragedy whose denouement 
will be the downfall of the monarchy and my 
death, if I do not decide to enter private life. 
I will not listen to these criminal insinuations, 
and I will die where Providence has placed me, 
imperturbable because I have never been any- 
thing but just. I am entirely resigned to any- 
thing. God and hope — these, my brother, are 



100 THE I.ITTT.E DAUPHIN 

things which none can take from me. I have, 
to oppose to the hatred of the wicked, my con- 
science and the courage that goes with misfortune. 
"Farewell. I will write you at more length 
to-morrow. Louis " 

This letter is worthy of the Louis who had 
always something noble beneath his stupidity, 
and was invariably brave and unmoved by 
danger and disaster. His standpoint toward the 
proposal he describes is only natural, perhaps 
it is even wise ; for it is possible that by the 
spring of 1792 affairs were too bad in France 
to be improved, even by such a coup d'Hat as 
was proposed. On the other hand, however, it 
was a plan not utterly without merit, a plan 
whose adoption might have helped in a time 
so terrible that nothing could have harmed. 
France even then was royalist at heart; the 
Dauphin's popularity had always been tremen- 
dous ; by that time Louis had entirely lost public 
confidence. There was a chance that, with a 
child on the throne, a little republican king, 
under the regentship of popular men of the 
time, reigning — a charming figure-head, accord- 
ing^ to' the worshipped republican constitution — 
hope might have dawned for P" ranee. It was 
a slender chance, to be sure, but still it was 
a chance. 



A LAST YEAR OF FREEDOM 101 

As proof of how seriously the project was 
taken/ there remains still a little copper witness, 
a sou struck off as a trial piece, dated 1792 and 
bearing the effigy of Louis-Charles. Stamped 
round his head are the words, ''Louis XVII., 
Roi des Frangais," and on the reverse side is 
written, '' Republique Frangaise." And this little 
sou is all that remains to remind us of the pro- 
ject that might have saved the Bourbons from 
death and France from a reign of terror. 

^ Baron Georges de Biet, in the Bulletin of the Societe d' etudes 
sur la question Louis XVII. 



CHAPTER VIJ 

THE FIFTY DAYS 

CONDITIONS in France were going from 
bad to worse. Finally, at the end of May 
1792, the King felt it necessary to veto two 
popular measures, one of them relating to the 
treatment of those of the clergy who refused 
the civil oath. This vetoing, though quite in 
accordance with his constitutional rights, created 
immense dissatisfaction, and was seized upon as 
a pretext for intensifying the King's unpopu- 
larity and for fomenting the people to an act of 
violence. On the very gates of the palace some 
daring person had the audacity to write : '* No 
King, no civil list! A king is an obstacle to 
the happiness of the people." 

Revolt was brewing everywhere ; the Jacobins 
stirred the seething pot of discontent and heaped 
up the fires, and the dish of their cooking was 
the famous day of the 20th June. This day 
was the anniversary of the oath of the tennis- 
court at Versailles, and also, as it happened, 
within a day of the anniversary of the flight 



THE FIFTY DAYS 103 

to Varennes. On the former account it was 
deemed a favourable moment for a demonstra- 
tion and uprising. 

At five o'clock, therefore, on the morning of 
June 20, gatherings had already formed in 
several of the faubourgs of Paris. These crowds 
of rudely armed men and women grew rapidly 
larger and larger, and finally amalgamated 
and marched to the Assembly. Through the 
Assembly's hall they defiled in a motley crew 
that was more grimly humorous than actually 
threatening. 

One section bore for their standard an old 
pair of breeches on a pike, with the motto, 
'' Vivent les sans-culottes ! '' Another company 
carried along a pitchfork with a calf's heart stuck 
on it and an inscription reading, '' The heart 
of an aristocrat." Whatever their intentions, 
they could hardly be said to be a prepossessing 
crowd in appearance, made up as they were 
in great part of the scum of Paris — wretched 
creatures with their faces blacked with coal, in 
a childish desire to make themselves more 
hideous ; some of them half-drunk, others half- 
naked, and all of them armed with extraordinary 
and ridiculous weapons. 

Leaving the Assembly, this burlesque of an 
army straggled across the chateau garden .harm- 
lessly enough, for so far they had done no 



104 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

damage, with the exception of bursting in an 
iron railing. Now, however, they set about 
entering the chateau, and there followed that 
portion of the demonstration about which his- 
torians have quarrelled so often. 

Revolutionary sympathisers have wished us 
to think that the 20th June was a sort of 
popular fete, innocent as a schoolboy's outing ; 
royalists, on the other hand, have represented 
it as a day of unmitigated horror and violence. 
The fact that the crowd which forced its way 
into the King's presence was armed with pikes, 
pitchforks, boat-hooks, crowbars, and knives 
fastened to sticks, disproves the theory that 
Paris had gone out that June morning with 
the mere intention of celebrating a national 
anniversary by a joyous demonstration. On 
the other hand, the fact that Louis stood un- 
guarded and face to face with the mob for 
hours, and escaped quite unharmed, gives the 
lie to the statement that the crowd was really 
bloodthirsty. Probably the truth of the matter 
is as M. Taine represents it when he says that 
by four o'clock in the afternoon the crowd had 
stood on their feet from ten to twelve hours, 
and were terribly bored, tired, and fractious. 

Their leaders urged them to go into the 
Tuileries, and with a rush they obeyed, dash- 
ing up the great stairway with such impetuosity 



THE FIFTY DAYS 105 

that the cannon, picked up off its carriage and 
carried along in their arms, reached the third 
room on the first storey before it stopped. Doors 
were smashed in with hatchets, and in the great 
hall of the QEil de Boeuf the mob found them- 
selves face to face with their King. Hue and 
another faithful servant attempted to get Louis 
out of the way and to bolt him into his bed- 
room, but the King, no coward for all his weak- 
ness, would not submit. 

** Open ! " he cried. ** What have I to fear from 
Frenchmen ? " 

These words, absurd as they were from a man 
who had been for months in constant danger of 
losing his life from Frenchmen, produced, never- 
theless, an excellent effect. The crowd was 
astonished, and as Weber, the Queen's foster- 
brother, says in his flowery and high-flown 
memoirs, " The sudden apparition of a divinity 
surrounded by lightning and thunderbolts could 
not have made a greater impression on this 
crowd of brigands than did the appearance of 
the King, alone, without guards or suite." 
There is no doubt that Louis never showed 
himself so courageous a man, so kingly a king, 
as he did that day when he faced, unmoved, 
the screaming, hooting mob, and stood calm 
and good-tempered in their midst through the 
sweltering hours. 



106 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

In moments of actual danger Louis never 
lacked courage ; on this day, moreover, that 
terrible inertia, everywhere else so disastrous to 
him and his cause, served him well. A king 
who had stormed and raged and attempted to 
retaliate against the insults of the vulgar and 
childish mob would very likely have been their 
victim. This man who, on the contrary, faced 
them calmly, and received their taunts with 
gentleness, almost with indifference, inspired 
them with awe. 

Hue tells us that at their first glance at their 
serene King, the furious crowd was almost ready 
to lay down their arms and fall at his feet. To 
this impassive demeanour Louis added, with 
an astuteness not usual to him, an occasionally 
melodramatic remark, sure to catch the ears 
and the hearts of the hysterical mob. In short, 
he stooped, as must all men who hope to succeed 
in public positions, to play to the gallery. 

'' Sire, do not be afraid," said a faithful 
grenadier. 

Taking the man's hand, Louis raised it to 
his heart. '' Grenadier," said he, ** rest your 
hand there, and see if my heart beats like one 
that is afraid." Such a phrase as this mu^t have 
seemed to the ignorant crowd supremely inspiring. 

The behaviour of Madame Elisabeth, the 
King's saintly sister, was equally admirable. 



THE FIFTY DAYS 107 

When he had presented himself to the mob, 
she clung to him by the coat, resolved to follow 
him, whatever might be his danger. The crowd 
pushed them apart, however, and alone in the 
midst of the furious people, Madame Elisabeth 
was mistaken for her sister-in-law, the Queen, 
and came near to losing her life at the hands 
of some men with pikes. " The Austrian ! " 
they cried, and a pike was thrust against her 
throat. *'You do not want to hurt me," said 
the young Princess to him gently. *' Put away 
your weapon." Some one told her would-be 
murderer that she was not Marie-Antoinette. 
" Why did you undeceive them ? " she asked 
reproachfully. ''If they could have taken me 
for the Queen, it would perhaps have given 
her time to escape." 

The Queen herself was, meanwhile, in a 
near-by room, her eyes full of tears that she 
was not able to be with Louis in his danger. 
"It is my duty," she cried, *'to die by the 
King's side," and it was only with the greatest 
difficulty that those who were with her per- 
suaded her that the difficulty of Louis's position 
would be infinitely increased if she should join 
him and he should be unnerved by the sight 
of her danger. Finally, yielding to this con- 
sideration and to the fact that, being a mother 
as well as a wife, she owed herself no more 



108 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

to the King than to the Dauphin and his sister, 
who were clinging to her in pitiable terror, she 
gave in, and consented to remain where she 
was. At that moment the tumult without re- 
doubled and, rushing to the door, the poor Queen 
cried out to Hue, '* Save my son ! " 

*' At these words," says the loyal servant, " I 
took the august child and carried him to the 
room of Madame Roy ale, which was far enough 
away for him not to hear the noise. The young 
Prince asked in sobs what the King and Queen 
were doing, and it was hard to seem reassured 
about their position. . . . Happily, word came 
soon that the Queen had retired to her son's 
room, and I took the Dauphin there. Hardly 
had he passed from Madame de Tourzel's arms 
into those of the Queen, hardly had he received 
her passionate caresses — for, not finding him 
in his room, the Queen had for a moment feared 
he was lost — than blows commenced to fall with 
redoubled force against the door of the next 
room. At this noise I flung myself toward 
a passage which communicated with the King's 
bedroom. I opened it, and the Queen and her 
suite took refuge there." 

Set skilfully into the woodwork, the door of 
this passage had nothing which betrayed its 
presence. A moment later, the hordes poured 
into the Dauphin's room, now empty, and 



THE FIFTY DAYS 109 

attacked the woodwork with their hatchets. In 
a few seconds all the panelling near the secret 
door was smashed to pieces, and the wall was 
laid bare. By some lucky miracle, however, the 
door itself rested undiscovered. But for this, 
no one knows what fate might not have met 
the Dauphin and his mother. 

All this time, each section of the royal family 
had been ignorant of the other's fate, Louis and 
his sister prey to the cruellest anxiety about 
Marie-Antoinette and the children, Marie-Antoi- 
nette almost certain at times that her husband 
had been assassinated by the mob, whose cries 
and rushings to and fro resounded through the 
chiteau in a most alarming fashion. 

After a little, the Queen abandoned her refuge 
in the room behind the secret door to go into 
the Council Chamber. Arrived there, she sud- 
denly missed the Dauphin. To her terror, one 
of the ladies cried out, '* Monseigneur le Dauphin 
has been captured," and Marie-Antoinette fell 
back fainting. It was a false alarm, however, 
and before long the boy was brought back by 
another of the ladies and a man, who had pro- 
tected him. At this the Queen revived and was 
full of gratitude. Placed behind the long table 
in the Council Chamber, the Dauphin and the 
rest of the royal party watched the mob, now 
somewhat subdued, as it filed by. 



110 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

** Do not be afraid," said their leader to Marie- 
Antoinette. "You have been misled, as well as 
the King. The people love you more than you 
suppose," and with this the crowd marched past 
the table. Some of them insulted her ; others, 
moved at the sight of her and her children, 
wept and uttered benedictions. 

The strange army had still its standards — the 
bleeding calf's heart, the banner on which was 
written, " Tremble, Tyrant, thine hour is come ! " 
the effigy of the woman hanging from a lamp- 
post (the favourite execution-place in the early 
days of the Revolution), and all the rest of their 
ghastly emblems. With wonderful self-control 
the Queen supported serenely not only the sight 
of these fearsome things, but also the anxiety she 
still felt as to the fate of Louis and Elisabeth, 
and was able to sit calmly between the Dauphin 
and Madame Roy ale and review aifably this 
astounding army. 

One woman in the crowd even went so far as 
to fling down on the table a red cap of Liberty, 
which the crowd forthwith insisted that the 
Dauphin should wear. In obedience to the will 
of the mob, the cap, so loathsome to royalists, 
was put on the Dauphin's blonde curls. It was 
an indignity to which his father had already 
submitted. The heat was so great, however, 
that the child could not bear the weight of 



THE FIFTY DAYS 111 

the cap more than a moment, and it was 
taken off. 

Finally, the distressing scene ended : Madame 
Elisabeth ran in, crying out, " All goes well ! 
The King is in safety ; the National Guard 
surrounds him and answers for his life." 

Soon after this the royal family was re-united, 
after a separation which had put them all into 
terrible anxiety, if not into great danger. Over- 
come with fatigue — for it was eight o'clock in 
the evening before the crowd finally left the 
chateau — Louis threw himself down in an arm- 
chair and took the Queen and his children 
into his arms. 

Not long after this touching scene, the 
Dauphin found himself surrounded by a deputa- 
tion of members of the Assembly, which had 
been sent to the Tuileries. These men, curious 
to know what sort of child he was, and what kind 
of education he had had, commenced to ask him 
questions. Poor little boy, to have passed 
through a trying 'ordeal like the day of the 20th 
June, only to submit, at eight o'clock at night, 
to an examination on geography ! A true little 
Prince, he rose to the occasion, and acquitted 
himself very well, astonishing and pleasing the 
deputies by the correctness of his answers, par- 
ticularly to questions about geography and the 
newly arranged territorial divisions of France. 



112 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

The examination over, the Dauphin noticed 
a certain member of the National Guard who 
had just come into the room, and who, so he 
learned, had been most zealous in protecting 
the King. 

**What is his name?" asked the child. ** I 
want to know it and remember it." This tradi- 
tionally royal desire to remember and repay 
faithful servants sits quaintly on the head of 
the little seven-year-old boy who had just 
emerged triumphant from a geography exami- 
nation. 

** I do not know, Monseigneur, " said Hue. 
" But he will be flattered if you go to him 
and ask him yourself." 

Accordingly the child put his question to 
the soldier. To his chagrin the man declined 
to answer, even when the Prince urged him a 
second time. Then Hue himself asked the 
man's name. 

'* I would rather not say," replied the man 
sadly, **for it is, unfortunately for me, the same 
as that of an execrable man." 

This faithful soldier, as Hue was able to 
discover, had the name of Drouet, the same 
as that of the postmaster who was responsible 
for the arrest at Varennes. 

And so finished, with the Dauphin's bed- 
time, the uprising which, though it accom- 



THE FIFTY DAYS 113 

plished no great harm save some such damage 
as the tearing away of the wall in the child's 
room, was, as Croker says, "a rehearsal for 
the terrible loth August," when the same 
actors were to play again the same roles on 
the same stage. On the loth August, how- 
ever, the play — instead of being a comedy, or 
even a farce — was destined to be a poignant 
tragedy. 

There now commenced '' The Fifty Days " 
which marked France's final transition from 
the monarchy of the Bourbons to the republic 
of terror. These fifty days, it has been said, 
have had already, and will probably continue 
to have, a greater influence on the destinies of 
mankind than any other fifty days in the history 
of the world. 

The royal family was during this period in 
the greatest danger. Not a day passed that 
those in the Tuileries did not fear for the lives 
of their masters, never a moment went by 
during which royalty could feel secure. Louis 
was certain that assassination awaited him, and 
with his usual phlegm seems to have accepted 
the danger calmly. 

So great were the fears felt for the safety 

of the royal family, that one of their friends 

conceived the idea of having made for their 

use three cuirasses formed of a dozen thick- 
8 



114 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

nesses of taffetas, so as to be impenetrable to 
bullets or knives. Madame de Tourzel under- 
took to offer these to the Queen. Marie-Antoi- 
nette tried hers on at once — the other two 
were, of course, intended for Louis and the 
Dauphin — and then coolly invited the gover- 
ness to test the cuirass by striking her with a 
dagger. The mere suggestion that she should 
commit such an act upset the poor lady terribly, 
and she absolutely refused to obey her mis- 
tress. After Marie-Antoinette had taken off the 
cuirass, the governess put it on herself and 
attempted to give herself a stab. It was found 
that the garment was, as it had been repre- 
sented to be, quite impenetrable. That such 
extremely mediaeval protection should have 
been judged necessary is sufficient indication 
of the dangers in which royalty was placed. 

To avoid any chance of having to endure 
a second 20th June, the Tuileries garden was 
kept closed to the public. This had become 
the only promenade of royalty, who could not 
go abroad for fear of insults. The people grew 
to look upon the palace with a sort of horror, 
as a place which they ought to hold in exe- 
cration. Presently it became impossible for 
the royal family to go even into the garden 
without being insulted by people outside the 
gates. This deprivation of air and all out- 



THE FIFTY DAYS 115 

door exercise was particularly trying to the 
Dauphin. 

One evening the experiment was tried of 
making an expedition to the child's little garden. 
Some persons passing by, however, saw the 
Queen and the boy, and commenced to sing 
insultingly and to make a show of looking 
towards the Prince and his mother with scrupu- 
lously covered heads. The outing, therefore, 
was not a great success, and was not repeated, 
Louis-Charles continuing to pass his days shut 
away from the toy garden where he had spent 
so many happy hours. 

As time went on conditions grew more 
and more humiliating and alarming, until, after 
the arrival in Paris at the end of July of the 
Marseillais, that army of "bandits from the 
Midi," the audacity of the populace became 
positively terrifying. The Queen was now 
insulted even through the windows of her 
apartments, which looked out on the court- 
yard. 

It was suggested that, the Queen's rooms 
being very inadequately guarded, she should 
go to sleep in the Dauphin's apartments. The 
Dauphin, ignorant of the reason of this change, 
was delighted to see his mother sleeping in 
his room, and used to run to her bed every 
morning as soon as she waked up, to take 



116 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

her in his arms and make pretty speeches to 
her in his gallant little -boy fashion. This 
childish practice is said to have given the 
unhappy Queen-mother the only happy moments 
in her sad days. 

It was not alone the lives of Louis and his 
family that were in danger, however. The great 
monarchy of the Bourbons was threatened. In 
the Assembly it was settled that the King's de- 
position was to be debated on the 9th August. 
The result of the debate was, however, of com- 
paratively small moment, for it had been arranged 
that if the Assembly should not before midnight 
decree the King's downfall, those without would 
beat their drums, ring the bells of Paris, and 
march under arms against the Assembly and the 
palace. That these plans were laid carefully and 
well in advance is proved by the fact that people 
in the King's household had, as much as a week 
beforehand, an accurate printed programme of 
what was to take place, and, as it turned out, of 
precisely what did take place on the fatal loth 
August. 

The night of the 9th was a terrible one to 
those in the Tuileries. Of them all the Dauphin 
alone slept; the rest stayed up, waiting in their 
apartments for what the dawn might bring. 
Midnight passed. The Assembly had not ren- 
dered the decree. Three-quarters of an hour 



i 



THE FIFTY DAYS 117 

more went by ; then, suddenly, the tocsin was 
heard ringing all over Paris, and from every 
quarter of the city came to the ears of the 
watchers the noise of cannon mixed with the 
beating of drums. For those inside the chateau 
there was nothing to do but to wait. 

Between four and five o'clock, Madame Elisa- 
beth and Marie-Antoinette were together. Some 
one opened the shutter of the King's closet. Day 
was beginning to dawn. Madame Elisabeth went 
to the window and looked at the sky, which was 
very red. 

"Come, sister," cried Elisabeth to the Queen, 
who was seated at the back of the room, **and 
see the breaking of the dawn." Marie- Antoinette 
went, and looked. It was the last time the sun 
rose on her a queen. 

At seven o'clock it was announced that the 
Marseillais and the rest of the revolutionary 
army was marching on the chateau. Even then, 
says Taine, the King might, if he had been 
willing to fight, have defended himself, saved 
himself, even been victorious. But Louis was 
not willing. 

Less than an hour later Roederer, Procureur 
Syndic of the Council General of the Depart- 
ment of Paris, asked to see the King. " The 
danger," said he, ** is beyond description. De- 
fence is impossible. Of the National Guard 



118 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

there are but a small number on whom we can 
count. The rest will join the assailants at the 
first attack. Your only resource is to seek refuge 
with the Assembly." To Louis this course was 
highly repugnant, and Marie-Antoinette had said, 
a few moments before, that she '' would rather be 
nailed to the walls of the chateau," than seek an 
asylum with the hateful Assembly. Now, how- 
ever, there was no choice. Louis and his family 
went, and, going, they left the palace of kings 
for ever. 

The headquarters of the Assembly were near 
by, and the royal family made their way thither 
on foot, passing between two lines of guards and 
surrounded by the furious crowd that kept cry- 
ing, " Down with tyrants ! Death ! death ! " So 
closely were they pressed upon by the mob that 
Marie- Antoinette was robbed of her watch and 
purse by one of the patriots. 

At first the little Dauphin walked along undis- 
turbed, amusing himself by kicking the heaps of 
leaves between the legs of those who walked 
before him. Poor child ! he had witnessed so 
many of these terrible popular uprisings that in 
his small mind there may very likely have grown 
up the impression that revolutions were ordinary 
everyday occurrences in all royal families, and 
that it was only natural and fitting that palaces 
should be invaded periodically by frantic mobs. 



THE FIFTY DAYS 119 

Indeed, it would not have been strange if this 
had been his idea of royal life, for nearly all his 
seven years had been passed in the midst of terror 
and sudden alarms, of bloodshed and midnight 
tocsins. No wonder he had grown blasd in the 
face of revolutionary outbreakings. 

His unconcerned progress amongst the leaves 
was interrupted by a tall grenadier, who, fearing 
the child might come to danger in the dense 
crowd, picked him up and carried him, holding 
the little boy high over the heads of the mob. 
For a moment Marie- Antoinette mistook the 
man's intention, and thinking he was about to 
hurt the child, she uttered a piercing scream and 
was on the point of fainting. 

Presently they reached the Assembly. The 
Dauphin was given back to his mother. Louis 
mounted the platform by the President. 

*'I have come, gentlemen," said he, '*to save 
France from a great crime. I know I could not 
find greater safety than amongst you." There 
then began the discussion which lasted thirteen 
hours, and finished by robbing Louis of his 
throne, the Dauphin of his heritage. 

At the Tuileries, meantime, the mob was dis- 
porting itself as best it could without the prin- 
cipal victims. At first their invasion of the 
chateau had been a peaceable one, then suddenly 
a shot went off, probably by mistake. No one 



120 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

can tell which side fired it, but the results were 
fatal. In an instant the mob had fallen on the 
royal household and massacre began. Nearly 
everybody was killed, down to the pot-boys in 
the kitchen, and in many cases cruelty even 
went so far as to inflict not only death but 
torture. At the same time, while the royal 
corridors ran with the blood of faithfal Royalists, 
a sort of bedlam reigned ; porters seated them- 
selves on the throne in the coronation robes, 
a woman of the streets lay down in the Queen's 
bed, and a body of revolutionaries screamed out 
the Marseillaise hymn, while one of the National 
Guards accompanied them on the harpsichord. 
Never did a palace see a scene at once so 
horrible and so grotesque. 

The noise of all this penetrated to the 
Assembly, and was heard by the royal family. 
All of them were full of distress and anxiety 
for their faithful friends they had left behind. 
The Dauphin flung himself into the arms of 
his governess, weeping violently, for the heroine 
of his baby romance, Pauline de Tourzel, was 
one of those left behind. His childish anguish 
was pitiful, and even awakened the sympathy 
of the none too soft-hearted deputies who stood 
by. After a time, to the Dauphin's joy, news 
came that Pauline had been saved. 

The conclusion of this terrible day was a 




H 1s 






THE FIFTY DAYS 121 

decree which, suspending the King, kept him 
and his family hostage, and suppressed the 
civil list. The Bourbons were no more. It 
was M. Louis Capet, his wife and children, who 
left the Assembly at ten o'clock on the night 
of August lo. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE TEMPLE 

TT was in the Convent of Les Feuillants that 
-■- the Dauphin and the rest of the royal hos- 
tages spent the night following the fatal decree. 
The Tuileries, sacked, and full of the dead 
Royalists and drunken revolutionaries, they were 
destined never to enter again. 

The lower part of the Convent of Les 
Feuillants was then used for the offices of the 
Assembly. In the upper storey was hurriedly 
prepared a little suite of cells for the accom- 
modation of the royal family and a few devoted 
friends who wished to accompany them. The 
Dauphin shared his cell with Madame de Tourzel, 
Madame Elisabeth, and the ill-fated Princesse 
de Lamballe, the Queen and her daughter were 
in another, and Louis had a cell to himself. 
The royal party also included several other 
persons. As on the previous night, no one 
slept except the poor little Prince and Princess, 
who, after their long confinement in the heat 
and noise of the Assembly hall, were utterly 



THE TEMPLE 123 

exhausted. The royal family being without any 
change of linen or clothing, it had been necessary 
to scurry over Paris to find something for them 
to put on. 

A king forced to appeal to his subjects for 
old clothes is a figure tragic in its absurdity. 
It was with great difficulty that there were 
found any little shirts to fit the Dauphin ; finally, 
some were obtained from the Countess of Suther- 
land, the wife of the English Ambassador, who 
had a son about the Prince's age. No sooner 
was the child put into one of these borrowed 
garments than he fell sound asleep. Mingled 
distress and fear, however, kept all the grown 
people from so much as shutting eyes all night. 
Their position was indeed one of real danger. 
The excited and triumphant people outside their 
refuge kept up a constant howling of threats 
and insults, and it was feared they might at 
any moment break in and massacre the victims 
who had escaped them that morning at the 
Tuileries. 

Next day, as the Queen lay in bed, Madame 
de Tourzel brought the Dauphin to her. Marie- 
Antoinette looked at him and his sister sadly. 
'* Poor children ! " said she. " How heartrending 
it is ! Instead of handing them down a fine 
inheritance, we can only say it ends with us ! " 

For three days the royal family remained in 



124 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Les Feuillants. Every morning between ten 
and eleven a party of factionaries came to lead 
them to the hall of the Assembly, and shut them 
up there in a private box. There, cooped to- 
gether in a space ten feet square and stiflingly 
hot, they listened to all sorts of insults and 
execrations directed against royalty and them- 
selves. 

The first day after their establishment in the 
convent, orders were given that the several 
friends who had come to bear their royal master 
company must leave them. This pained Louis 
deeply. '' I am, then, a prisoner," said he. 
** Even Charles I. was happier than I, for he 
kept his friends near him to the end." 

It was obvious that the royal family could 
not remain indefinitely in Les Feuillants, which 
had been suggested as merely a temporary refuge 
until order should be restored in Paris. At first 
it was proposed to lodge them in the Luxem- 
bourg, but since this place would be difficult to 
guard, it was finally decided, after considerable 
discussion, to place them in the Temple, which 
until the outbreak of the Revolution had been 
the Paris residence of Louis's brother, the Comte 
dArtois. The Temple consisted of a palace 
and a deserted tower. 

Marie-Antoinette's words when she heard this 
decision were almost uncannily prophetic. 



THE TEMPLE 125 

'*You will see," whispered the Queen to 
Madame de Tourzel with a shiver, ''that they 
will put us in the tower, and will make a veri- 
table prison of it. I have always had a horror of 
that tower, and a thousand times I have begged 
M. le Comte d'Artois to have it torn down. 
It was surely because I had a presentiment of 
what we shall have to suffer there." 

It was on the afternoon of the 13th August 
— a fact which must afterwards have seemed 
significant to the superstitious amongst the 
King's friends — that the royal party left Les 
Feuillants to go to the Temple, where so much 
misery awaited them. They were accompanied 
by a number of persons whom Louis had chosen 
for the service of himself and his family. Amongst 
these persons were Madame de Tourzel and 
Pauline, M. Hue and Madame de Lamballe. 

The drive to the Temple was like so many 
others which the Dauphin and his parents had 
taken, a long sorrow and humiliation. Directions 
had been given that during this journey the royal 
family should be treated '* with the respect due 
to misfortune." This respect resolved itself into 
the shouting of coarse insults all along their 
route and the stopping of the carriage in the 
Place Vendome to show the King how a statue 
of his great ancestor, Louis XIV., had been 
thrown down. 



126 THE T.ITTLE DAUPHIN 

"Behold," said some one, *' how the people 
treat their kings ! " 

" May it please God," replied Louis with 
dignity, **that their fury shall exhaust itself on 
inanimate objects ! " And it rather seems as if, 
for once, the usually none too witty Louis had 
come out victorious in a verbal contest. 

The journey to the Temple was made to 
last two hours and a half, and during all this 
time the royal family were the recipients of 
that ''respect due to misfortune" which the 
people of Paris had interpreted in so peculiar 
a fashion. 

It was after dark when the royal carriage 
drew up at the Temple. Those in charge of 
the arrangements, by a cruel thoughtlessness, 
or a yet more cruel irony, celebrated this moment 
of arrival as if it were a joyful occasion, and 
greeted the downfallen royalty, with illuminations 
and a feast. It was ten o'clock before this grand 
supper was served, and the little Dauphin was 
by that time so tired that he fell asleep and 
almost dropped his head into his soup. 

This feast was served in the salon of the 
palace. As will be remembered, the group of 
buildings called the Temple (which was in part 
built as early as 1265 or 1270 as the headquarters 
of the Knights Templars in Paris) included a 
palace and a tower. It had at first been intended i 




THE TEMPLE 
Froift an en^ravijig in the Carnarlet Musem 



THE TEMPLE 127 

that the royal family should live in the former, 
but the Commune at last decided on the tower. 
The rooms there were not quite ready, however, 
when the King arrived, and so, for several hours, 
he and his family remained amongst the crowd 
of people in the palace. 

While they were still at table — the Dauphin 
sound asleep on the knees of his governess — 
word suddenly came that the Dauphin's room 
was prepared. A man snatched up the child 
in his arms and started off with him across a 
number of rooms and down a long, dark passage, 
Madame de Tourzel, in terror, following him 
as fast as she could go, but unable to keep 
up and having no notion where this stranger 
intended taking her little master or what he 
intended to do with him. Finally, reaching 
the tower building, the man set the child down 
in one of the rooms and went off Afraid of 
irritating him, the governess did not detain him 
to ask even a single question, but immediately 
put the Prince to bed in silence, and sat down 
on a chair beside him to watch over her little 
charge. She was much afraid that she and the 
Dauphin were to be separated for good from 
the King and Queen. However, to her joy, 
this fear proved ill-founded, and after a time 
Marie-Antoinette joined her. 

''Did I not tell you it would be like this?" 



128 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

said she, glancing about the tower room. Poor 
Queen! this chance to say ** I told you so" 
was her only consolation ! 

The Temple exists no longer ; it was de- 
molished years ago by the first Napoleon, who 
was anxious to extinguish all reminders of ancient 
times, and the place where it stood is marked 
in modern Paris by the squalid and unattractive 
Square du Temple. It will therefore be neces- 
sary to describe briefly this tower in which the 
Dauphin was destined to spend the rest of 
his days/ It consisted of two parts, the great 
tower, with its high centre turret surrounded 
by four smaller turrets, and alongside of this 
great tower, and part of the same building, 
the little tower, in which — the great tower being 
at the moment in a state of dilapidation — the 
royal family was lodged for the first weeks of 
their stay at the Temple. It is therefore with 
the little tower that we are at present concerned, i 

This little tower was a most inadequate royall 
residence. On each storey .were two rooms with 
a smaller room between them. On the lower 
floor slept the Dauphin and the Queen, on the 
upper one the King was lodged, together with a 
bodyguard. Madame Elisabeth was established 
in a kitchen, *' of which the filth was horrible." 

* An interesting and detailed account of the Temple is given by {j 
M. Lenotre in "The Last Days of Marie- Antoinette," pp. 21-32. 



THE TEMPLE 129 

It is said that even the man in charge was 
ashamed at showing her to such a bedchamber. 
The King's room does not appear to have been 
much more attractive. Hue says that **the bed 
was full of insects," and that, ''engravings — for 
the most part very indecent " — covered the walls. 
The King took these pictures down himself, say- 
ing as he did so, '' I do not wish to leave such 
objects under the eyes of my daughter." 

Ugly and uncomfortable as it was, the Temple 
was not then particularly secure, either from 
attack from without or attempts to escape from 
within. Work was immediately commenced, 
however, with a view to remedying this defect. 
A number of the buildings which surrounded the 
tower were torn down, and around the vacant 
square left after this was accomplished there 
was erected a high wall. As may be imagined, 
the guarding of the royal family was most rigo- 
rous. Guards watched over them constantly, 
night and day, so that they were never alone 
together for a minute, and an immense deal of 
energy was expended on trying to prevent them 
from holding communication with persons outside 
the Temple. For this purpose the table-napkins 
were unfolded, the rolls broken and the crumb 
probed with a fork, and all sorts of other minute 
precautions taken to avoid the possibility of their 
receiving letters surreptitiously. 



130 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

It seems, on the other hand, to have been 
practically the only diversion of the prisoners to 
attempt to get the better of their guards, and 
they and their friends exercised the most wonder- 
ful ingenuity in carrying on their correspondence. 
The long story of this contest betwixt guards 
and prisoners makes very entertaining reading. 
Sometimes, for example, one of the King's faith- 
ful servants was able, as he walked along the 
passage from the kitchen to the royal quarters, 
to replace the paper stopper of a decanter with 
another on which some news or warning had 
been written. At other times, notes were 
wrapped around little balls of lead and dropped 
into the food. We can fancy what joy the 
boyish soul of the Dauphin must have taken in 
all these elaborate mysteries, for he was certainly 
far too quick-witted not to have noticed them. 

The life of the royal family, particularly after 
the forced departure of all, except Hue, of the 
suite they had brought with them, was painfully 
monotonous. They saw no one, did nothing, 
went nowhere, day in, day out. By a pathetic 
effort at self-deception, they drew up a schedule 
which they followed exactly, in the hope thereby 
of cheating the dull, unoccupied hours into 
passing less slowly. At six o'clock the King, 
and presumably the rest of his family, arose ; 
at nine the family met in the King's room for 



THE TEMPLE 131 

breakfast ; at ten they all went down into 
Marie-Antoinette's bedchamber, which, being 
the biggest, they used as a living-room. The 
next hour was spent in the education of the 
Dauphin. Louis instructed the child in geo- 
graphy. Marie- Antoinette taught him history 
and to get verses by heart, while Madame 
Elisabeth gave him lessons in arithmetic. There 
is no doubt this was the most interesting hour 
of the day. At eleven the lessons stopped, 
and the women set themselves to various sorts 
of feminine handiwork — sewing, knitting, the 
making of tapestry. At noon, the three Prin- 
cesses went to Madame Elisabeth's room to 
change their dresses, and at one the whole 
family went for their walk in the garden. 

These walks were a daily humiliation, and 
would probably have been cut out of the pro- 
gramme entirely if the Dauphin's health had not 
demanded exercise in the air. The guards never 
forgot to show the royal prisoners all the insults 
they could think of. In justice to these men, 
however, we must not forget that they were 
intoxicated with vanity at being put in command 
over an ex-king and queen, and that, moreover, 
they were probably almost as bored as their royal 
charges. Ennui, however, can only partially 
excuse the meanness of these gaolers, who in- 
vented a hundred ways of making the daily 



132 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

outings unpleasant. A pet device was ostenta- 
tiously to put on their hats and sit down as the 
royal family passed, rising pointedly and taking 
their hats off the moment they had gone by. 
One man, according to Madame Royale, " know- 
ing that my mother disliked the smell of tobacco, 
would puff it in her face whenever she happened 
to pass him." 

The daily walk at an end, the royal family 
returned to the Temple for dinner. This was 
eaten at two o'clock, and afterwards there was 
a game of piquet or backgammon. At four, 
Louis, in the respectful words of the loyal Clery, 
'' took a few moments' repose," while the rest sat 
silently reading. After his nap, some little time 
was devoted to conversation, and the Dauphin 
had his writing-lesson. 

This lesson was given to him by Clery, that 
faithful servant of the Dauphin who, when his 
little master was shut up in the Temple, had 
begged permission to share his imprisonment, 
and who, remaining in this dreary service for 
five months, was practically the last friend from 
the outside world with whom the Prince came 
in contact. When Clery had finished the writ- 
ing-lesson, he took his small master into another 
room, where the two played ball or shuttlecock. 
Finally, the day finished with reading aloud from 
books not too serious for the children to under- 



THE TEMPLE 133 

stand. At eight the Dauphin had his supper, 
and immediately afterwards went to bed. Hue 
gives us a copy of the prayer which Louis taught 
the child to say every evening : — 

** All-powerful God, who hast created me 
and redeemed me, I adore thee. Preserve the 
days of the King, my father, and those of my 
family. Protect us against our enemies, and give 
Madame de Tourzel the strength she needs to 
bear the trials she endures for our sakes." 
(Madame de Tourzel had been removed from 
the child's side under very alarming circum- 
stances only a few days after the arrival at 
the Temple.) 

After this prayer the Dauphin was put to 
bed, and Madame Elisabeth and the Queen 
took turns at watching by his side, supper — 
which was served at nine o'clock for the grown 
people — being brought into the bedroom for the 
Princess who was on duty. Supper over, the 
royal family retired to their rooms. So passed 
the day. Did ever, , one wonders in reading 
the account of their emptily busy hours, people 
make more pathetically heroic efforts to kill 
time ? 

Days such as have been described followed 
one another with unbroken monotony until the 
massacres of September brought them an excite- 
ment far more terrible to bear than any enn7ii 



134 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

could have been. On September 2 much dis- 
turbance was noticed in the neighbourhood of 
the Temple. The royal family, notwithstanding 
this, went for their usual walk in the garden. 
Suddenly, while they were still walking about, 
guns commenced to go off, and drums to beat. 
The guards hurried the royal family back into 
the Temple and shut them up securely. No 
one knew what might happen ; every one feared 
for the worst. As they came in, one of the 
officers said to Louis, '* The drum has beaten 
to arms. We shall all perish, but you shall 
die first ! " 

At this threat the Dauphin burst out crying, 
and ran into another room in terrible distress. 
His sister followed him and had great difficulty 
in quieting him, for the poor child fancied his 
father was already being murdered. Immedi- 
ately after the excitement commenced, Hue was 
arrested and removed for the second time. (He 
had been taken away from the Temple in August 
at the same time Madame de Lamballe and the 
governess and her daughter were removed, but 
had managed to get permission to return.) This 
time, however, the arrest was definite, and the 
faithful Hue said good-bye for the last time to 
his royal friends. That night the drums beat 
steadily, and the Queen could not sleep. 

Next day the royal family was not allowed to 



THE TEMPLE 135 

walk in the garden, and at dinner-time they heard 
again the drums and the cries of the people. 
After dinner Louis was just sitting down to 
a game of backgammon with the Queen — which 
Madame Royale tells us he played merely for 
the sake of having an opportunity to say a few 
words to her unheard by the guards — when a 
terrific shouting was heard. It was the mob 
approaching with the head of the Princesse de 
Lamballe on a pike, and moved by the loathsome 
wish to make Marie-Antoinette kiss the lips of 
her murdered friend. The royal family as yet 
knew nothing of the cause of the uproar, and 
the officer who chanced to be in the room 
behaved with much consideration, closing the 
windows and drawing the curtains so that the 
Queen might be spared the appalling sight of a 
mob using as a trophy the dismembered body of 
her friend. Louis asked what was the matter. 

'' Since you will know," replied another officer 
brutally, " it is the head of Madame de Lamballe 
that they want to show you." 

At this, Marie- Antoinette fainted in the midst 
of her weeping children and family. 

Meantime, the crowd outside the Temple had 
grown to enormous proportions, and kept demand- 
ing to see Marie-Antoinette. It is hardly to be 
supposed that if they had succeeded she would 
have escaped the fate of her friend. Those in 



136 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

charge of the Temple showed themselves on 
this occasion to be men of great resource and 
tact. Instead of resisting the mob by force, 
they hastily tied a tricoloured sash across the 
main entrance. Confronted with these honoured 
colours the mob, crazy as it was, paused ; 
none cared to tear down the sacred barrier. 
The crowd was stopped. At this favourable 
moment one of the officers delivered a speech 
to the mob, in which, with the utmost cleverness, 
he flattered them and appealed on the royal 
family's behalf to what vestiges of reason re- 
mained with them in their excitement. Finally, 
a small deputation of the crowd was admitted 
into the garden and allowed to parade about 
there proudly with their disgusting trophies. 
After some difficulty, and by a further administra- 
tion of ridiculous compliments on their bravery 
and nobility of character, the deputation was 
induced to go away, and at the end of about 
an hour danger was over. 

The mayor now sent his secretary to Louis. 
This man, according to the young Princess, be- 
haved very absurdly, and said a thousand things 
which at any other time would have set the royal 
family laughing. He fancied that it was out of 
respect for him that the Queen was standing. 
The fact was that ever since her recovery from 
her fainting fit she had stood in Madame 



THE TEMPLE 137 

Elisabeth's room motionless and perfectly in- 
sensible to everything that was going on about 
her. Instead of standing in honour of her 
ridiculous visitor, the probability was she did 
not even realise he was there. A curious 
incident of this terrible day was the demand 
made upon Louis that he should pay for the 
tricolour sash. This seems to show that his 
guards were not only resourceful but were also 
excellent men of business. 

That night the drums again beat constantly, 
and poor Marie-Antoinette lay sobbing, hour 
after hour. 

After the September massacres, the strictness 
with which the royal family was guarded in- 
creased every day. But in spite of the never 
relaxing vigilance of the guards, they received 
letters almost every day. Sometimes these 
letters were hidden in their food, at other times 
Turgy, the devoted Royalist servant connected 
with the Temple kitchen, was able to conceal 
notes in various places about their rooms — in out- 
of-the-way corners, in the hot air holes of the 
stove, or under the furniture. Besides delivering 
written communications, Turgy was able to keep 
the prisoners more or less in touch with events in 
the outside world by means of an elaborate code 
of signs which Madame Elisabeth invented. If, 
for example, the Powers were concerning them- 



138 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

selves with the royal family, Turgy was to touch 
his hair with the fingers of his right hand, and 
should the servant place the second finger of his 
right hand on his right eye, royalty would under- 
stand that the Austrians had been successful on 
the Belgian frontier. 

All this shows plainly that the King and his 
family were far from hopeless. It is difficult to 
comprehend how they could have continued to 
believe they would be saved by the foreign 
invasion of France about which they were so 
preoccupied, or to understand how sane people 
could imagine that bloodthirsty Paris would give 
them up alive to a victoriously invading army. 
It would have been supposed that, instead of 
hoping for foreign invasion, they would have 
lived in constant dread of such an event. This, 
however, is only one more of the strange features 
of the Bourbons' behaviour during the Revolu- 
tion — almost inexplicable, unless we are prepared 
to accept it as a fact that Louis and his wife and 
sister had not amongst them the common-sense 
of one ordinary child of fourteen. 

Another method by which this misguided 
family secured news seems to have been in- 
vented by Hue, and, after his departure, it was 
continued by Clery. This was to listen, either 
from the top of the tower or from a convenient 
window, to what was shouted out by the news- 



THE TEMPLE 139 

crier who passed by in the street every evening. 
This crier always shouted over several times 
a summary of what had taken place in the 
Assembly, in the Commune, and with the armies, 
and it was consequently quite easy for the 
listener to gain a slight though rather tantalising 
idea of the day's news. This news the listener 
found a chance to communicate to whichever of 
the Princesses was watching beside the Dauphin's 
bed when he brought the supper to her, and 
she in turn was able to tell it to her fellow- 
prisoners. 

The royal family, however, was not alone 
deprived of distractions and newspapers, but 
suffered also from the lack of more material 
things. Their food was excellent, but their 
other wants were not so well provided for. Hue 
tells us melancholy stories of insufficient table 
and bed linen, of torn sheets on the Dauphin's 
bed, and of how the Queen and Madame 
Elisabeth were forced to mend Louis's clothes. 
The King owned only one suit, and in con- 
sequence Madame Elisabeth and the Queen 
had to take advantage of the time when he was 
in bed to do their mending. On one occasion 
Madame Elisabeth had to sit up part of the 
night sewing, to put her royal brother's scanty 
wardrobe in such condition that he would 
have clothing fit to wear next morning. Marie- 



140 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Antoinette, in the midst of these privations, 
which of course seemed far more painful to 
people used to living in royal state, must some- 
times have thought bitterly of those days at 
Trianon when she had light-heartedly played 
at living simply, and had found her greatest 
pleasure in escaping from court etiquette. 

On the 2 1 St September the Convention voted 
the abolition of royalty and the establishment of 
a republic. It was at four o'clock in the after- 
noon that this news was announced to the 
ex-royalties at the Temple. A great body of 
officers and people came to stand before the 
tower ; there was a flare of trumpets ; then a 
profound silence while the decree was read. 
Inside the tower, Louis and his family listened 
and heard distinctly every word of the revolu- 
tionist, who had "the voice of a Stentor." 
Seated near them was a particularly hostile 
guard, who, as the reading of the proclamation 
commenced, fixed on Louis a triumphant, taunt- 
ing grin. With royal pride the dethroned King 
refused to give the officer any satisfaction, and 
holding his book in his hand he continued to 
read, unmoved, until the reciting of the decree 
was finished. Marie-Antoinette, to whose viva- 
cious nature such self-control was more difficult 
than to her unemotional husband, also preserved 
the same indifferent appearance. 



THE TEMPLE 141 

That night Clery wrote, as was his habit 
when there was occasion to request for anything 
which was necessary for his little master, and 
employed his usual formula : '* The King asks 
on behalf of his son for ..." 

"The King.?" questioned one of the Temple 
guards. " How dare you use a title which has 
been abolished by the will of the people ? " 

Thereafter the requests were worded as follows : 
'' So-and-so is needed for the use of Louis- 
Charles." The Princesses, moreover, were com- 
pelled to remove with their own hands the 
crowns with which their linen was embroidered. 

This formal abolition of royalty meant, how- 
ever, merely a fresh humiliation rather than an 
actual blow to the Dauphin's parents, coming 
as it did after many weeks of what was abolition 
in all but name. A far more poignant sorrow 
hung over them in the proposed separation of 
Louis from the rest of the family, something 
which had been threatened for a long time. 
On the 26th September Clery told Louis that 
this separation was soon to be made, and that 
he was to be taken to live in the adjacent great 
tower, while his wife and children remained in 
the little tower. Three days later, Clery's pro- 
phecy was fulfilled. As a sort of preparation, 
evidently, for this move, the Commune had 
decided on certain new rules for the royal 



142 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

prisoners, and on the morning of September 29 
some officers came to announce this decision to 
the family. 

Madame Royale's account of this episode un- 
consciously reveals in its two short sentences 
the whole unreasonable attitude of the royalists, 
with whom, although we cannot fail to give 
them unmeasured sympathy, we have often also 
to feel the deepest irritation. Here is what 
she says : *' One day they removed pens, paper, 
ink, and pencils ; they searched everywhere even 
with rudeness. That did not, however, prevent 
my mother and me from concealing some pencils 
which we preserved." Was ever a point of view 
more absurdly illogical ? The Bourbon prisoners 
felt they should have been trusted as other 
prisoners were not, because they were royal ; 
they resented the fact of a search such as that 
to which other prisoners would have been sub- 
jected, and yet they were ready, even eager 
and proud, to behave as ordinary prisoners might 
have done, and to deceive their guards by hiding 
prohibited pencils. We notice this quaint un- 
reasonableness in a hundred episodes of their 
captivity. They boasted of how they had out- 
witted their gaolers, and in the same breath 
complained because their gaolers did not trust 
to their royal honour. 4 

On the evening of the search, Louis was 



THE TEMPLE 143 

removed to the great tower, to the intense 
distress of all the prisoners. At first it seemed 
as if he would not be allowed to see his family 
again, but poor Marie-Antoinette's grief at the 
separation was so terrible that even the gaolers 
were softened, and the royal family was per- 
mitted to meet each day at meal-times and when 
they took their walks in the garden. Finally, 
about a month after the King had been removed 
from the little tower, his family was allowed 
to follow him, and on the 26th October the 
prisoners were reunited in the great tower. 



CHAPTER IX 

JANUARY 21, 1793 

T^HE reunion of the royal family was marked 
-*- by an occurrence which caused the greatest 
grief to the Dauphin and Marie- Antoinette. 
This was the transferring of the child, who till 
then had been under the immediate care of his 
mother, to the charge of Louis. To the Queen 
and the royalists this proceeding seemed an 
indication of pure spite, emanating from a wish 
to take from poor Marie-Antoinette what was 
her greatest pleasure and resource, the care 
of her little son. Very possibly this was the 
case. The following order, quoted by M. de 
Beauchesne, is the official explanation of the 
child's removal : — 

" Commune of Paris . . . Year I. of the 
French Republic, the 27th October, 1792. 

" Acting on observations made by one of the 
members serving at the Temple that the son 
of Louis Capet is day and night under the 
direction of women — mother and aunt — and con- 
sidering that this child has reached the age 



JANUARY 21, 1793 145 

when he should be under the direction of men, 
the Council, deliberating on this subject, has 
ordered and does order that the son of Louis 
Capet shall immediately be removed from the 
hands of women, to be given to and to remain 
with his father day and night, except after 
dinner-time, when he shall go up to the apart- 
ments of his mother and aunt, while his father 
is sleeping, and shall come down again between 
five and six. All this is to be under the sur- 
veillance of one of the commissioners of service." 
The blow fell, and the weeping little Prince 
was taken away from his mother at the very 
moment of the much anticipated reuniting of the 
royal family in the great tower of the Temple. 
This great four-turreted tower, it will be remem- 
bered, was the place originally intended for the 
lodging of the prisoners, and they had been placed 
temporarily in the little tower only because the 
big one was not ready for them. The great 
tower was a building some 150 feet high and 
divided into four storeys. Its walls were im- 
mensely thick — so thick, in fact, that the windows 
stood in little alcoves some eight or nine feet 
deep. Great iron screens had been put at these 
windows, which kept the air from coming in and 
[the royal prisoners from seeing out. They had 
leven to ask their guards if they wished to know 
what the weather was. Of the four storeys of the 



146 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

tower, two, the second and third, were devoted 
to the use of the prisoners. Originally each of 
these storeys had formed one great room, but 
they were now divided each one into four rooms. 
On the second floor was Louis's lodging and that 
of the Dauphin and Clery. Marie-Antoinette, 
her daughter, and Madame Elisabeth lodged 
on the third floor. With rare tactlessness, those 
who had charge of the decorating of these rooms 
had covered the walls of the King's antechamber 
with paper representing the stone interior of 
the prison, and had hung up in it a copy of the 
Declaration of the Rights of Man, written in 
big letters and framed in a tricoloured border. 

The daily life of the Dauphin and his family 
continued much as it had been in the little tower, 
and, despite the alarming decree, the child saw 
his mother nearly as much as before, except that 
he was no longer with her at night. Though the 
regime was altered, however, the prisoners them- 
selves, depressed by the absence of light and 
sunshine, had changed greatly. They were no 
longer serene and cheerful, and the guards noticed 
a marked difference in their demeanour. The 
King was restless, and walked to and fro, wander- 
ing from one room to the other ; the Dauphin 
came and went in the same way, and seemed to 
have lost all his playfulness. The family were 
far less often together, and when together con- 



JANUARY 21, 1793 147 

versed much less frequently. In fact, everything 
— as one of their guards says in his narrative — 
seemed to foretell the still greater misfortunes 
that were soon to fall upon them. 

The system of guarding was even stricter than 
before, but its severity was greatly increased or 
modified from day to day, according to the dis- 
positions of the guards who happened to be on 
duty ; for it must not be supposed that all these 
men were brutal and tyrannical. In fact, so sym- 
pathetic were some of them that their kindness 
towards the royal prisoners afterwards cost them 
their lives. It is said that many of them, by 
showing their sympathy in indiscreet ways, not 
only compromised themselves but also did more 
harm than good to the prisoners. Others be- 
friended royalty more sensibly, and did much to 
make the gloomy days in the great tower bear- 
able. One of them used to bring Marie-Antoi- 
nette newspapers which, according to her orders, 
were of two sorts, one of sound principles, the 
other less moderate. These the Queen and 
Madame Elisabeth would take away and read 
on the top of the tower, where a sort of pro- 
menade had been screened off around the battle- 
ments so that the royal family could walk about 
there unobserved by the public and without see- 
ing anything of the outside world except the sky. 

On the other hand, many of the guards were 



148 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

almost fanatical in their severity, and Clery re 
counts all sorts of ridiculous precautions which 
they thought it necessary to take. 

One of them, for example, insisted on breaking 
the macaroons, to see if there were letters con- 
cealed inside, while another carried caution so 
far as to cut open the peaches and crack the 
stones, though it would certainly seem a more 
than human feat to hide correspondence inside 
a peach stone. A third of these painstaking 
gaolers forced poor Clery to drink one day the 
soapy water which had been prepared for the 
King's shaving — this on the pretext that it might 
contain poison. When the clean clothes came 
back from the washing, each piece was opened 
out carefully to its full extent, while the laundry- 
book and paper in which the clothes were wrapped 
up were both put by the fire, so as to discover 
whether there was not some secret writing on 
them. 

Besides the fanatical guards there were others 
who were merely insolent, like the stone-cutter 
who stretched himself out one day in his dirtiest 
clothes on the Queen's damask sofa, and ex- 
plained his behaviour by remarking that all men 
were free and equal, a remark that reminds us 
by its inappropriateness of the Dauphin's quota- 
tion of the proverb about glory when he flung 
himself into the thorny bushes. 



JANUARY 21, 1793 149 

However, judging from the various accounts 
of the Temple captivity, it would appear that no 
small number of those who came actually in con- 
tact with the prisoners were kindly disposed 
towards them, and that even more of them would 
have shown sympathy had they not been in terror 
of compromising themselves — a very grave risk 
in those times. One day a certain one of these 
gentler gaolers tried to strike a few notes on 
the harpsichord which stood in one of the tower 
rooms, and found the instrument in such bad 
condition that it was impossible to do anything 
with it. Seeing this, Marie-Antoinette said she 
would be glad to use the instrument to teach her 
daughter music, but that it had till then been 
impossible to get it tuned. That same day the 
instrument was put in order, and in the evening 
the guards and the Queen looked through the 
little pile of music that lay near the harpsichord. 
One piece was called " La Reine de France," and, 
reading its title, the dethroned Queen exclaimed 
sadly, "Times are changed!" Another piece 
was the '' Marseillaise," which, it is said, Marie- 
Antoinette, by some strange freak of caprice, 
played on the newly tuned harpsichord for the 
entertainment of her gaolers. 

In November the royal family, now prisoners 
of some three months' standing, received their 
first official visit from the National Convention, 



150 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

which sent a deputation to see if Louis had any 
complaints to make. Either by accident or 
design, one of the members of this deputation 
was Drouet, the postmaster at Varennes, but for 
whom the royal family might then have been free. 
It may be imagined how unpleasant it was to 
them to see this man, particularly since he be- 
haved in a very objectionable fashion. The Queen 
refused even to speak to him when he questioned 
her, and shivered when he sat down beside her. 
All this evidently did little to ingratiate the 
already rabidly anti- Royalist Drouet, and a little 
while later he proposed in the Convention the 
cruel measure of entirely depriving Louis of all 
communication with his family. 

A few days after Drouet's visit, the King fell 
ill with fever and a swelling in the face. Per- 
mission was at first refused for him to receive a 
visit from his dentist, but the illness growing 
more serious, his old doctor was allowed to come 
to the Temple to see him. The Commune, in- 
deed, became quite disquieted about his condi- 
tion, and insisted on frequent bulletins, though it 
is, at first consideration, difficult to see why they 
should have been so sympathetic in the ill-health 
of the prisoner who was so soon to be put to 
death. Louis's illness lasted six days, and hardly 
was he recovered than the Dauphin, whom the 
guards had not permitted to be removed from 



JANUARY 21, 1793 151 

the sick-room, fell ill also. Marie- Antoinette was 
greatly distressed, because she was unable to stay 
with the sick child at night, but notwithstand- 
ing repeated demands permission to do this 
was denied her. In turn the Queen, Madame 
Royale, Madame Elisabeth, and finally Clery, 
were infected with the disease, which is said to 
have been whooping-cough. The faithful servant, 
though in considerable pain, at first attempted to 
get up and attend to his duties, but this Louis 
would not allow. The royal family joined to 
take care of their devoted friend. The Dauphin 
nursed him eagerly, fetching him what he needed 
and hardly leaving him all day ; while Madame 
Elisabeth shared her medicine with him. Clery 
became so ill there was talk of taking him away 
from the tower. At this, becoming alarmed lest, 
if he were once removed from his masters he 
might never be able to get back to them again, 
he put up a brave pretence of being better, 
and even succeeded in leaving his bed on the 
sixth day. 

Something happened in connection with this 
illness that touched the Dauphin's servant very 
much. One evening, when Clery was convales- 
cent and able to be up again, he put the 
child to bed and went away, leaving the Prince 
alone. Shortly afterwards Madame Elisabeth 
came into the room and gave the boy a package 



152 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

of medicine which she had had no opportunity 
to deliver direct to Clery, and told the Dauphin 
to hand this to him when he came in. Long 
afterwards, at eleven o'clock, Clery returned and 
heard the little Prince calling him in a low voice. 
Astonished to find the child awake, Clery went 
to his bedside and asked what was the matter. 

''Nothing," said Louis-Charles, ** except that 
my aunt gave me a little box for you, and I 
did not want to go to sleep without giving it to 
you. I am glad you have come at last, for my 
eyes would keep shutting." 

Three minutes after, the little boy was sound 
asleep after this exhibition of what was no mean 
heroism. 

From some anecdotes told by Clery we can 
get an idea of the effect which the imprisonment, 
which had now lasted many months, was having 
on the child's disposition and character. The 
Dauphin, not yet eight years old, had become 
a model of mature thoughtfulness and discretion. 
Though he was still child enough to be able 
now and then to take his unhappy parents out 
of their troubles by his gaiety and pranks, he 
never seemed for a moment to lose sight of 
his sad and precarious position. Never did he 
forget to act and talk with the reserve necessary 
to those who are surrounded by enemies ; and 
never was he heard to speak of Versailles or 



JANUARY 21, 1793 153 

the Tuileries or any other subject which might 
recall painful memories to his family. If he 
saw arriving a guard whom he knew to be 
kinder than the rest, he would run to the Queen 
to tell her about it, saying with the greatest 
delight, ** Mamma, it is Mr. So-and-so to-day." 
Once he seemed to recognise one of the guards 
as some one he had seen before, but the man 
could not prevail upon him to tell where they 
had met. Finally, leaning towards the Queen, 
he whispered to her, "It was on our journey 
to Varennes, Mamma." 

The Dauphin's strangely mature sensitiveness 
shows itself in another incident recounted by 
Clery. A mason was one day working in one 
of the tower rooms, making holes for great bolts 
to safeguard the prisoners, and when he went 
away to eat his lunch the Dauphin commenced 
to amuse himself by playing with his tools. At 
this Louis, the workman-king, took the hammer 
and chisel from the boy's hands and showed 
him how they should be used. A few minutes 
later the mason returned, and moved at seeing 
Louis so employed, said to him, *' When you 
leave this tower you can say you have worked 
yourself to build your own prison." 

" Ah ! " answered the King, " but when and 
how shall I leave it ? " 

At this the Dauphin burst into tears, while 



154 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Louis, dropping the hammer and chisel, went 
back to his room, where **he walked up and 
down with great strides." 

Not long after this, the Temple regulations 
became yet more stringent. Early in December 
it was decreed that all sharp instruments should 
be taken away from the prisoners, and this order 
was carried out with the most minute exacti- 
tude — razors, penknives, scissors, curling-tongs, 
and various toilet implements being all removed. 
It was even debated at some length whether 
the royal family should be permitted to use 
knives and forks at table. Some of the guards 
thought no table silver should be allowed, others 
saw no harm in forks, but thought there ought 
to be no knives. Finally, it was decided to 
let the prisoners continue to eat in the old way, 
but to remove knives and forks the moment 
meals were finished. These regulations caused 
the greatest inconvenience to the prisoners. One 
day Madame Elisabeth, mending the King's 
clothes, had for lack of scissors to cut the thread 
with her teeth. 

''What a change!" said Louis sadly. ''At 
your pretty house at Montreuil you lacked for 
nothing." 

*'Ah, my brother," said she, ''do you think 
I could feel any regrets when I am sharing 
your misfortunes?" 



JANUARY 21, 1793 155 

Hardly had this decree been carried out when 
the royal family heard the appalling news that 
the King was to be taken before the Convention 
and tried. A few days later, on the nth 
December, the Dauphin and his parents were 
waked at five o'clock in the morning by the 
sound of commotion coming from all over Paris, 
and, hearing the noise, they knew that Louis's 
trial was about to commence. After break- 
fasting upstairs with the Queen, the child and 
his father went downstairs as usual to Louis's 
room, where, despite his anxiety, the King 
played a game of Siam with Louis-Charles. 
Twice the Dauphin found himself unable to play 
beyond the number sixteen. 

''It is strange," said he discontentedly, "that 
whenever I reach the number sixteen I lose 
the game." And at these words Clery, who 
stood near, fancied he saw a startled expression 
pass over the face of the sixteenth Louis. 

At eleven o'clock the mayor of Paris and 
some members of the Commune came to the 
Temple to tell Louis he was to be taken before 
the bar of the Convention and interrogated. Al- 
ready the Dauphin had been parted from Louis, 
and carried away without any explanation to his 
mother's room. At one o'clock Louis left the 
Temple for the first time in four months. 

Meanwhile, in the rooms upstairs, Marie- 



156 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Antoinette and her children were waiting in 
the deepest anxiety and distress ; for despite 
every effort to get news from the guards, it 
was impossible to secure the slightest informa- 
tion about what was going on. At dinner-time 
the family went down as usual to dine in Louis's 
rooms, but beyond the fact that the King was 
no longer there, they learned nothing. Return- 
ing upstairs, Clery was able to find an opportunity 
of talking to Madame Elisabeth while the Queen, 
with feminine tact, kept the solitary guard occu- 
pied with conversation about himself, his affairs, 
and his parents. While the delighted young 
man's attention was thus engaged, Clery was 
able to give Madame Elisabeth an idea of what 
had happened since the royal family separated 
from Louis at breakfast time, and to tell her 
of his fear that in future the King would not 
be allowed to see them. 

The two spoke of Louis's probable fate. 
Clery, perhaps insincerely, said he felt sure the 
sentence at worst would be merely exile. 

**No," said the Princess, *'he will die a 
victim to his goodness and his love for his 
people. ... I have no hope that he will be 
saved." And she went on gloomily to wonder 
whether the Convention would satisfy itself 
with trying the King, or would bring Marie- 
Antoinette also before its bar. 



JANUARY 21, 1793 157 

Clery, they realised, would not be allowed 
in future to pass between the isolated King 
and the family, so it was necessary to arrange 
some manner of communicating news. The 
ingenious servant proposed that he should con- 
tinue to take charge of the Dauphin's clothes, 
although the child would now be under the 
care of his mother, and in sending up every 
few days what would be necessary for the little 
Prince, an opportunity might be found to send 
a message as well. This plan suggested another 
idea to the Princess, and handing Cl^ry one of 
her own handkerchiefs, she bade him keep it 
so long as Louis remained in good health. 
*' If, however, he is ill," said she, *'you will 
place it amongst my nephew's linen." The 
method of folding the handkerchief was to 
denote to his family the sort of illness from 
which the King suffered. 

At last, when the conversation had lasted 
about an hour, the poor conspirators com- 
menced to fear lest Marie-Antoinette's powers 
of distracting the guard might be nearly at an 
end, and they were consequently forced to bring 
their talk to a close. At half- past six the King 
returned to the Temple, and Clary's prophecy 
proved only too true. Orders had been given 
that he should be kept separate from his family, 
and this order was carried out, although both 



158 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Louis and the Queen demanded insistently that 
the family should be reunited. The Dauphin 
passed the night with the Princesses, and since 
his bed was still downstairs in the King's rooms, 
Marie-Antoinette gave him hers, while she, torn 
with grief and anxiety, sat up all night. 

The next day Marie-Antoinette repeated her 
request that the King might be reunited with 
his family, or if this was impossible, that the 
children might at least see him sometimes. On 
the 15th December, the Council-General sent 
its reply, which was to the effect that the 
Dauphin and his sister might see the King, 
but only on condition they were absolutely 
separated from their mother until after the 
trial. Placed in this cruel dilemma, Louis 
decided to leave the children with Marie- 
Antoinette, both because he had not the time, 
preoccupied as he then was, to take care of 
them properly, and also because he generously 
preferred to be lonely himself rather than that 
his wife should make any further sacrifices. 

Life in the Temple, gloomy and depressing 
at best, now became doubly sad, when to its 
other deprivations were added terrible anxiety 
and loneliness. The Dauphin and the Prin- 
cesses no longer went for walks in the garden, 
nor did Louis. '' I have no heart to walk about 
alone," said the King. Louis in his rooms 



JANUARY 21, 1793 159 

downstairs passed his days in considering his 
defence and talking to his counsel, who paid 
him visits every evening. In the rooms above 
his head his poor family, constantly uneasy and 
distressed, spent their time in wondering what 
his fate would be, and in trying to arrange 
means of communicating with him. 

It was not long before they hit on a method, 
and one day Turgy, the faithful kitchen ser- 
vant, delivered to Clery a note which Madame 
Elisabeth had slipped into his hands when she 
gave him her table-napkin after dinner. This 
note was written in pin-pricks, and in it the 
Princess begged Louis to write her a letter. 
This the King did, and an answer to his letter 
was duly delivered by Turgy, hidden in a ball 
of cotton which he tossed under Clery's bed 
as he passed the door of the King's apartments. 
This interchange of letters continued regularly, 
and after a time Clery and Madame Elisabeth, 
who seem to have shared a genius for these 
miniature conspiracies, effected an arrangement 
by which notes could be let down and drawn 
up at night by a cord which was hung from 
the w^'ndow of the Princess's room to that 
directly underneath. It was by these means 
presumably that Louis learned of Madame 
Royale's illness. The Princess developed some 
trouble with her foot, and the King was greatly 



160 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

distressed and alarmed. Another thing which 
made Louis unhappy was not being able to 
be with his daughter on the fourteenth anni- 
versary of her birth. *' To-day is her birthday," 
said he with emotion, "and I am not with her." 

Two other holidays took place during this 
sad time. Christmas, the day preceding his 
second visit to the Convention, Louis spent in 
writing his will, that dignified and touching 
document in which he laid down certain rules 
for the guidance of his son, "if he should ever 
have the misfortune to become King." His 
son was to remember that he should give all 
his energies to securing the welfare of his sub- 
jects ; he should show every gratitude to those 
who had befriended his father and suffered for 
him, and he should forgive all those who had 
caused him pain and suffering. 

On the first of January Clery alone offered 
greetings to this dethroned King. Louis re- 
turned them sadly, exclaiming as he did so, 
"What a New Year!" 

Of what happened meantime to the Dauphin 
and his mother upstairs we have no detailed 
account, nor indeed do we need any. A little 
imagination is all that is necessary to picture 
for us those interminable anguished days of 
waiting that the poor little Prince passed amongst 
the weeping Princesses. Can we not see him 



JANUARY 21, 1793 161 

sitting about sadly in corners, talking to his 
sister, his childish mind full of questioning and 
anxiety? Probably every now and again his 
boyish high spirits would make him throw off 
the cloud which oppressed them all, and he 
would burst into laughter or play. Then with 
a sudden prick of conscience that he was en- 
joying himself in the midst of so much unhappi- 
ness, he would stop his games with a start and 
run to beg his mother's pardon with a mute 
kiss and hug. Then he would go back to his 
corner again and leave Marie-Antoinette and 
Madame Elisabeth to their gloomy conjectures 
as they sat talking, low-voiced, together side 
by side. No father to give him lessons, no 
Clery to play games with him, no garden 
to run about in, nothing but some darkened 
prison rooms and the company of three poor 
women wincing under the terrible blow which 
in their hearts they knew must fall — such was 
the Dauphin's life during those weeks of waiting. 
In this way more than a month passed. 
Finally the end came. It has often been said 
that Madame Royale's narrative of what took 
place during her captivity is cold and unfeeling, 
and sometimes it is impossible to disagree with 
this condemnation. Yet, in the words in which 
she tells of how the waiting family heard the 

news that the King was to die, we have a 
II 



162 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

sentence as tragically suggestive as any other in 
all history and literature. She has just spoken 
of how a little hope had been given them that 
Louis would be spared. Then she says, '* On 
Sunday, January 20th, at seven in the even- 
ing, the family learned of his sentence from 
the newsvendors who came to cry it under the 
windows." Picture the waiting Princesses and 
the little boy, their nerves stretched to breaking- 
point by cruel suspense, suddenly listening to 
hear, rising through their shuttered windows, 
the shouted words, '' Capet condemned ! The 
tyrant to die ! " Was ever harsh news de- 
livered more harshly ? 

At half-past eight that evening the family were 
allowed to go down to have a last interview 
with Louis. The Queen led her son by the 
hand, behind followed Madame Elisabeth and 
the young Princess. When they reached the 
door they all flung themselves into the King's 
arms, and for several minutes there was a silence, 
broken only by the noise of their sobbing. Then 
Louis recounted his trial to them, giving excuses 
for those who had made him die. The story 
finished, he turned to the Dauphin, who now 
sprang from the position of simple child to that 
of the unhappy inheritor of the Bourbons' terrible 
legacy, and commenced to talk to him on religious! 
subjects, and to command him to pardon those* 




< s 
%^ 



JANUARY 21, 1793 163 

who had caused his father's death. Wishing 
to make such an impression on the bewildered 
and distraught boy as he would never forget 
while he lived, Louis lifted him upon his 
knees. 

'* My son," said he solemnly, ''you have heard 
what I have just said — that is, that you are never 
to think of avenging my death — and you have 
promised ; but since an oath is something stronger 
than ordinary words, swear, lifting up your hand, 
that you will carry out the last wish of your 
father." 

The boy, crying wildly, obeyed him. 

Marie-Antoinette was anxious that the family 
should stay with the King all night, but this 
Louis refused to allow, telling her that he needed 
to be alone and quiet to prepare for what was 
before him. She asked at least that they should 
be permitted to come back next day to say good- 
bye, and to this the King agreed. Finally, after 
an hour and three-quarters, the harrowing inter- 
view ended. It is almost incredible that Clery, 
an eye-witness, is right in saying that the four 
guards had stood by all the time without the 
slightest apparent emotion. At a quarter past 
ten the family rose to go. The King got up 
first and took the Dauphin by the hand, Marie- 
Antoinette holding the child's other hand, and 
slowly they went toward the door. 



164 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

''I assure you," said Louis, ''that I will see 
you again to-morrow morning at eight." 

''You promise ?" 

"Yes, I promise," answered the King. 

"Ah! why not at seven?" Marie- Antoinette 
asked piteously. 

"Very well, then; at seven. Good-bye." 

At the sound of the word " good-bye " the 
family burst again into sobbing, and Madame 
Royale fell fainting at her father's feet, which, 
all in her unconsciousness, she embraced tightly. 
At last Louis tore himself away from them ; 
the double door was shut ; they had seen the 
King for the last time. 

Upstairs, the Queen had barely strength to 
undress the Dauphin and put him to bed. Then 
she threw herself down just as she was, and 
all night they heard her trembling with cold 
and grief. At five o'clock the drums commenced 
beating, and from that time they were in constant 
expectation of being summoned to go down- 
stairs for their promised interview with the 
King. Louis, however, had given directions to 
his guards that they should not be allowed to 
visit him again, for to see them would unnerve 
him too terribly at a time when he needed all 
his strength. Not knowing this, however, the* 
Dauphin and the Princesses waited from minute 
to minute for the call. At ten, the Queen tried 




3 ^ 



o ■??, 



JANUARY 21, 1793 165 

to persuade the children to take some food, 
but they refused. 

Soon they heard the report of firearms and 
the rolling of drums. The populace outside and 
those who guarded the Temple commenced to 
shout joyfully. At this they knew Louis was 
dead, and by the side of his mother, speechless 
in her grief, the little Prince burst into tears. 

At ten minutes past ten on the morning of 
January 21, 1793, the Dauphin Louis-Charles, 
prisoner in the great tower of the Temple, became 
King of France. 



CHAPTER X 

A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 

TN the darkened room of the Temple, sur- 
-■" rounded by three weeping Princesses, the 
jeers of gaolers and populace ringing in his ears, 
the new King came into his inheritance. A 
week later a proclamation, issued by the Comte 
de Provence, his uncle, then a refugee at Hamm 
in Westphalia, proclaimed to the foreign powers 
the accession of the child king : — 

**We declare" — so reads the proclamation — 
" that the Dauphin Louis-Charles, born the 
twenty-seventh day of the month of March 1785, 
is King of France and of Navarre, under 
the name of Louis XVIL, and that, by right 
of birth as well as the fundamental laws and 
customs of the kingdom, we are and shall be 
Regent of France during the minority of the 
King, our nephew and seigneur." 

In nearly all the countries of Europe the 
new King was recognised. The death of his 
father had aroused nothing but horror all over 

the civilised world, and detestation for revolu- 

166 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 167 

tionary France. In England, first to hear of 
the tragedy, grief was so great that the theatres 
were closed, and indignation so hearty that the 
French ambassador was immediately dismissed. 
In other countries, feeling was much the same. 
The Russian Empress, the great Catharine, 
decreed banishment to all French people in her 
territory who refused to acknowledge formally 
their allegiance to the new King. In short — as 
has been said by an early historian — Louis XVII. 
was king everywhere except in France. 

And yet even in France, torn as she was 
by revolution within and foreign wars without, 
there were many who declared for Louis XVII. 
Even before the Comte de Provence issued his 
proclamation there were raised in many places 
in the provinces cries of dismay and indignation 
at the regicide. Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, 
and a number of other towns, proclaimed the 
new King. In La Vendee there was rebellion 
for his sake. Thus read the proclamation of the 
Vendean chiefs : ' * We, commanding the Catholic 
and Royal armies, have taken arms only to sus- 
tain the religion of our fathers ; to give back to 
our august and legitimate sovereign, Louis XVII., 
the glory and strength of his throne and crown." 
In like fashion the army of French refugees, 
under the leadership of the Prince de Conde, 
announced formally their allegiance to their 



168 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

imprisoned sovereign. From more than six 
hundred parishes all over France was raised 
the cry, ''Long live Louis XVII.!" According 
to Taine, if suffrages had then been free the 
immense majority of people — nineteen French- 
men out of twenty — would have recognised this 
unhappy little boy for their king. 

It was, then, in his tower, the centre of a city 
which persecuted him cruelly, itself in the midst 
of a France which loyally supported him, that 
the little Louis came into his kingdom. To his 
father, about to die, revolutionary Paris had pro- 
mised grandiloquently that '*the nation, always 
great and always just, would occupy itself with 
the fate of his family." Let us see how the 
promise was fulfilled. 

Immediately after Louis XVI.'s death fol- 
lowed a brief lull. The Revolution had killed 
a king, and stopped, at once nervous and com- 
placent, to draw breath. There was not much 
breathing-time, however, for most of Europe 
had declared war against the regicides. Carlyle 
has quoted one of the revolutionary leaders as 
saying : " The coalised Kings threaten us ; we 
hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the Head 
of a King ! " This is a fine figure, but for all 
her brave talk France was not finding that a 
revolution was the pleasant and simple affair 
she may have fancied it in her early optimism. 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 169 

All preoccupied with internal rebellion and ex- 
ternal attack, she had little time to think of the 
helpless nominal King in her midst. 

The royal prisoners for a time were ignored. 
In consequence, their condition improved. ** We 
had now a little more freedom," wrote Madame 
Royale. *' Our guards even believed that we 
were about to be sent out of France." This 
belief seems to have been the general one. 
There was some talk of exchanging them for 
some French prisoners held captive by Austria. 
The royal family itself was fully expectant of 
release. In a code of signals arranged between 
Madame Elisabeth and Turgy, by which the 
devoted servant was to give the Princess news 
of the outside world, the following direction 
appears : *' If they think we shall still be here 
in the month of August, hold the napkin in 
your hand." Evidently the optimistic Princess 
supposed the chances were that they would not 
be there in August ; and she was quite right, 
though not in the way she hoped. For in 
August Marie- Antoinette was at the Concier- 
gerie awaiting trial for her life, while the young 
King was under the care of his cobbler "in- 
structor," Simon, and of the five who had come 
together into the Temple just a year before, 
only two remained together, Madame Royale 
and her aunt. 



170 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

It cannot be supposed, however, that the 
increased personal liberty that came to the 
prisoners after Louis XVI. 's death, or even the 
hope of release they entertained, could do much 
to make happy the bereaved prisoners, the 
widowed Queen and fatherless children. Even 
the little King — child as he was — was heart- 
broken. 

** My boy," said Marie- Antoinette, trying to 
cheer him, '* you should think of the good God." 

"I have thought of Him," answered Louis- 
Charles — so the story runs — '* but when I try to 
think of God it is always poor papa who comes 
before my eyes." 

As for the Queen herself, her desolation was 
pitiful. For a month she sat there in her prison, 
refusing to go to walk in the garden, because to 
do this she would have to pass the door of the 
rooms where the murdered King had lived. 
No hope could touch her heart, and she was 
quite indifferent to her fate. Says her daughter : 
'* She would sometimes look at us with an ex- 
pression of pity that made us shudder." But 
presently the illness of the young Princess grew 
more serious, and this "fortunate circumstance" 
— to quote her own pathetic phrase — made a 
diversion for poor Marie- Antoinette. Finally, at 
the end of February, fearing that want of air 
would injure the health of the King, Marie- 




LOUIS XVIf, KING OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE 
From ail engraving by N. Heideloff 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 171 

Antoinette roused herself from her apathy and 
sought permission to go with her family for walks 
on the leads of the tower. This was granted, 
as was also her demand for mourning for them 
all. If the excitements of the Revolution had 
not robbed Paris of all sense of paradox, it might 
have struck the revolting city as a curious circum- 
stance that it should one day make the Queen 
a widow, and but a few days later complacently 
provide her with weeds in which to bemoan 
her widowhood. 

However that may be, Marie- Antoinette got 
her mourning — "the simplest things," as she 
had herself preferred. Looking at her children 
dressed in their new black clothes, the Queen 
exclaimed, ** You will wear them long, but I 
for ever ! " 

Affliction was not allowed to interrupt the ama- 
teur education of Louis-Charles, who his mother 
believed would one day actually rule over the 
country of the Bourbons. The two Princesses 
continued as best they could the lessons com- 
menced by Louis XVI. Lepitre, one of the 
Temple guards, in referring to these lessons, 
says : ''It was impossible not to be touched by 
the sight of the young King — barely eight years 
old — bending over his little table, reading the 
History of France with the greatest attention, 
then repeating what he had read, and listening 



172 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

eagerly to the observations of his mother or 
aunt. The most savage among the com- 
missioners could not altogether restrain their 
emotion." 

It was this same Lepitre who wrote the words 
of a song — Madame Clery wrote the music — 
called ** Filial Piety," which the sympathetic com- 
missioner offered to Louis-Charles. A week 
later when he came to the Temple, Marie- 
Antoinette called him into one of the rooms, 
where he found the two children ready to sing 
his composition. '' The daughter of Louis XVI.," 
says Lepitre, ''sat at the harpsichord, and beside 
her was her mother, with her son in her arms, 
trying, in spite of the tears that streamed from 
her eyes, to direct her children's playing and 
singing. Madame Elisabeth stood beside her 
sister, and mingled her sighs with the sad tones 
of her royal nephew's voice." 

It was, as may be imagined, a very touching 
scene, though — to tell the truth — Lepitre's verses 
are far from reaching the highest standard of 
poetry. ''Ah what! thou weepest, oh, my 
mother ! " — so they commence ; while the final 
couplet of the first verse makes the little King 
question whether he can complain of his fetters, 
since his mother shares them. 

Paris had for the time forgotten the royal 
prisoners. It was not long, however, before the 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 173 

revolutionists awakened to the fact that the King, 
though he was very Httle and entirely helpless, 
was far from negligible — that he was, in fact, a 
hostage worth his weight in assignats. Now that 
all royalists had proclaimed their allegiance to him, 
his importance was tremendous. Though the 
royalists might gain all else, the revolutionaries 
held always — so long as Louis-Charles remained 
in the Temple — the royalists' leader, their figure- 
head, their raison d'etre. So long as Louis XVI. 
was prisoner in Paris, it was impossible not only 
for his adherents to gather around him, but also 
impossible for them to gather around anybody else. 
In the person of this eight-year-old child the 
revolutionaries held more than one French king ; 
they held every French king. The whole essence 
of royalty was represented in the little prisoner, 
and it did not take his captors long to realise a fact 
of such immense significance, and to understand 
that, whatever else might happen, Louis XVII. 
must remain safe in their hands. 

At the end of March, therefore, the Council- 
General took precautions to ensure the safety 
of the prisoners and to prevent, if possible, any 
chance of attack or escape. For this purpose 
big screens were put up around the parapet of 
the tower, so that all view was cut off, while 
every chink was stopped up with the greatest 
care. Early in April, moreover, a series of 



174 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

stricter rules was drawn up for the conduct of 
the Temple guards : — No one was to make a 
plan of the tower ; the commissioners were to 
hold no talk whatsoever with the prisoners ; 
there should always be two commissioners near 
the prisoners — in fact, in their apartments ; the 
commissioners should neither send nor receive 
letters without communicating with the Council 
of the Temple. No precaution was spared to 
render safe the casket in which the Revolution 
kept its prize jewel. 

On the other hand, if the revolutionaries 
realised the value of their prisoner, so too did 
the royalists, and while the Council-General 
was building walls and passing regulations, 
faithful friends of the crown were, on their 
side, making plans, writing letters in secret ink, 
and conspiring in corners in the hope of saving 
their King and his family. Of the many extra- 
ordinary intrigues and episodes in Louis- 
Charles's life, the series of plots formed in the 
spring of 1793 to save him from the Temple are 
amongst the most romantic. 

The first plot of the series was hatched almost 
as soon as Louis XVI. died. It was on the 2nd 
February that the Chevalier de Jarjayes, for 
many years one of the most faithful of Bourbon 
subjects, received a visit which astonished him 
very much. His visitor was obviously, from his 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 175 

dress and his manners, a violent revolutionary ; 
he was, in fact, a man who had particularly dis- 
tinguished himself in the cause of liberty. 

M. de Jarjayes, naturally enough, received him 
coldly, and this coldness only redoubled when the 
stranger made the surprising proposal that the 
royalist should join him in a plot to deliver the 
royal family from the Temple. '* Here is a trap, 
to be sure ! " thought de Jarjayes to himself. His 
visitor, however, was prepared for suspicion. He 
handed the royalist a letter. 

'' You may have confidence " — so the note 
read — ** in the man who will speak to you in my 
behalf and will give you this letter. His senti- 
ments are known to me ; for five months he has 
not changed. Do not put much trust in the wife 
of the man who is shut up here with us. I do 
not trust either her or her husband." And this 
note was in the hand of Marie-Antoinette. The 
revolutionary's credentials were of the highest. 

This man, Toulan by name, had been the 
most enthusiastic of anti-royalists. Almost im- 
mediately after the royal family were shut up 
in the Temple he had gone there as a guard ; 
no sooner did he see the Queen than he became, 
without arousing the suspicions of his colleagues, 
I her firmest partisan. Those who cannot see 
S Marie- Antoinette except through a rose haze of 
romances and love-affairs have said that Toulan 



176 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

loved the Queen, but this is without any doubt 
a fable. What moved the revolutionary was that 
blood-relation of love — pity. It was this humble 
citizen of the republic who formed the first plan 
to save the prisoners ; and, consulting with the 
Queen, procured from her the letter of introduc- 
tion to M. de Jarjayes, as an experienced and 
faithful man, who might act as his accomplice 
and adviser. 

De Jarjayes, still a little suspicious it may be, 
wished to go and see Marie-Antoinette in prison, 
to talk over the project with her ; and Toulan, by 
exercise of a really remarkable ingenuity, was 
able to accomplish this seemingly impossible 
visit. There was, so it happened, a lamplighter 
who came every evening to the Temple, fre- 
quently bringing with him his two children. To 
this man Toulan told a fiction about a republican 
friend of his who was anxious to amuse himself 
by going to look at the captive King in the 
Temple. The lamplighter consented to let this 
curious person masquerade in his own filthy 
clothes, and so disguised, the Chevalier entered 
the Temple unsuspected, a few days later, and 
had an interview with the Queen. Their talk 
was of necessity a short one, but it was enough 
to assure de Jarjayes of Toulan's absolute trust- 
worthiness, and to give him and Marie- Antoinette 
a chance to sketch out roughly the plan of escape. 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 177 

It was now necessary to find a third accom- 
plice, some one who could work with Toulan 
inside the Temple. The Queen suggested 
Lepitre, and though the amateur poet was far 
from being so unselfish and devoted a man as 
Toulan, he was sympathetic and faithful enough, 
particularly after a talk which he had with de 
Jarjayes, in the course of which it is said that 
some money changed hands. 

The time had come to settle the details of 

the plot. Towards the end of February nearly 

everything was arranged. Here was the plan : 

Marie-Antoinette and Madame Elisabeth were 

to escape from the Temple in the disguise of 

their own guards ; uniforms were made for 

them, and Toulan, always ingenious, smuggled 

in hats. For Madame Royale another disguise 

was arranged. It will be remembered that the 

lamplighter, by whose unwitting aid de Jarjayes 

had been able to visit the Queen, often brought 

with him to the Temple his two children. It 

was in the clothes of one of these children that 

the young Princess was to escape. As for the 

young King, it has been said that he was to 

leave the Temple disguised as the other of 

1 the lamplighter's children. This, according to 

\ M. Paul Gaulot, who has written an interesting 

I book about this conspiracy, and also according to 

I the memoirs left by Turgy, was not the case. 



178 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

The arrangement was that the child should be 
carried out in a basket covered with linen. The 
task of carrying him out was entrusted to Turgy, 
and the faithful servant accepted it with delight. 

In this way were they to escape from the 
Temple, but one great difficulty remained. In 
Marie- Antoinette's letter to de Jarjayes she had 
warned him against the man and his wife who 
were shut up with them in the Temple — that 
is, the Tisons. Tison had always his eyes open, 
his ears alert for possible plots and intrigues ; 
it was felt it would be impossible to accom- 
plish the escape successfully unless he and his 
wife were got out of the way. It was therefore 
arranged to drug the two spies shortly before 
the escape would take place. By this means 
it would be several hours before those at the 
Temple could start in pursuit of the fugitives, 
for their departure would not be discovered until 
half-past nine, when supper was brought to the 
prisoners, and even then much time would be 
lost in breaking through the two great doors 
of their rooms. In the meanwhile, the prisoners 
and their faithful rescuers would be on their 
way to the coast of Normandy, where near Le 
Havre a boat was to be waiting ready to carry 
them to England. The journey from Paris to 
the sea was to be made in three little carriages : 
one for the Queen, the King, and the Chevalier ; 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 179 

a second for Madame Royale and Lepitre, and 
a third for Madame Elisabeth and Toulan. It 
had been suggested they should go in a berlin, 
but at the mere mention of the vehicle so 
intimately connected with the terrible fiasco 
of Varennes, Marie-Antoinette had shuddered. 
Choice fell, therefore, on the three small carriages. 

All was arranged ; and success, though far 
from certain, seemed very likely. That the care- 
fully and intelligently conceived plan came to 
nothing but disappointment, is in all probability 
the fault of Lepitre. This man, unsuccessful as 
a poet, was doubly a failure as a conspirator. 
Vain and romantic, he revelled in plannings, in 
secret meetings, and hidden notes ; but when it 
became time to act, his nerve and energy failed 
him. Again and again he raised objections and 
difficulties to a plot which, if it were to be 
carried out at all, must needs be carried out 
promptly. At last it was too late. For various 
reasons — some of which we have pointed out 
in speaking of the tremendous importance of 
Louis XVII. as a prisoner — popular attention 
was drawn anew to the Temple, and precautions 
were redoubled in guarding the royal family. 
The chance of escape was lost, for under the 
present conditions failure would have been nearly 
certain. It was all the fault of Lepitre. 

Toulan and the Chevalier, though discouraged 



180 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

were not even now utterly hopeless. Since the 
first plan had failed, they determined on a second. 
This was to save the Queen alone, since at 
that moment she seemed to be in greater danger 
than the rest. At first Marie-Antoinette would 
not hear of the idea, but finally, after much per- 
suasion, she consented, and arrangements were 
made for her escape. Suddenly, at the last 
moment, the Queen changed her mind again. 
She could not, even to save herself, leave her 
children. 

'' We have had a pretty dream, that is all," she 
wrote bravely to de Jarjayes. "... My son's 
interest is the only thing that influences me, 
and however happy I might be to escape from 
here, I cannot consent to separate myself from 
him. ... I could take no pleasure in anything 
if I had left my children behind. I give up 
our idea without regret." Toulan and de Jar- 
jayes now lost hope, but there was another to 
take their place. 

This successor was that romantic and mys- 
terious figure, the Baron de Batz, who led a 
forlorn hope to save Louis XVI. on his way 
to the scaffold, who engineered the famous 
Carnation Conspiracy, an attempt to deliver 
Marie-Antoinette from the Conciergerie, and 
who promised a million to the man who would 
save the Queen. De Batz, a Gascon, a man of 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 181 

wonderful charm and audacity, a typical hero 
of romance translated by some miracle into real 
life, having failed to save Louis XVI., made 
up his mind, early in February, that he would 
save Marie-Antoinette. Where Toulan and de 
Jarjayes had failed, he would succeed. 

His plan was of the simplest. At midnight 
on a certain day the Princesses, disguised in 
long military coats, were to mingle with the 
guards, the litde King in their midst, and were 
to be smuggled out of the Temple. De Batz 
was to provide himself with a sufficiently large 
number of accomplices, to make up, on that 
day, the entire guard of the Temple. Once 
outside, the royal family would be taken to a 
house in the country and hidden there. 

The day came ; the prisoners were warned ; 
at eleven o'clock all was going splendidly, 
when suddenly a banging was heard outside the 
Temple. It was Simon, the future guardian of 
Louis XVII. He had received an anonymous 
letter betraying the plot; and had arrived just 
in time. De Batz's audacious scheme was merely 
another failure — another of those misfortunes 
which met this unluckiest of queens at every 
turning. Even when, months later, the devoted 
Mrs. Atkyns penetrated into the Queen's cell 
at the Conciergerie and tried to save the 
royal prisoner, it was merely to meet another 



182 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

disappointment. The evil eye that watched over 
poor Marie-Antoinette through all her career 
never blinked, even for an instant. 

Two things which took place at about this 
time put further difficulties in the way of at- 
tempts at escape. One of these was the Tison 
episode, the other was the illness of Louis XVII. 
Tison and his wife, always ardent spies on the 
prisoners, became greatly annoyed one evening 
because a stranger had been admitted into the 
Temple to bring some clothes to Madame Elisa- 
beth, while their own daughter, of whom they 
were passionately fond, was excluded, and Tison 
himself let fall some expressions which, being 
reported to the mayor, aroused his suspicion. 
The two Tisons were examined, and made all 
sorts of accusations against the royal family, 
saying they had surreptitious correspondences 
with their friends, and naming Toulan and 
Lepitre as persons who had assisted in this. 
In consequence of this accusation there was 
made, shortly afterwards, a most minute search 
of the prisoners' rooms. 

"The searchers came at half-past ten o'clock, 
when my mother and I had just gone to bed," 
says Madame Royale. ''My poor brother was 
asleep ; they tore him from his bed in order 
to search it, and my mother took him up 
shivering with cold." All they found, however, 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 183 

in the course of a search which lasted till four 
in the morning, was a tradesman's card which 
Marie- Antoinette had kept for some reason or 
other, a stick of sealing-wax, and a religious 
token, "a heart dedicated to our Saviour," which 
belonged to Madame Royale. They went away, 
greatly exasperated at having made so insigni- 
ficant a haul. 

A few days later the searchers returned and 
examined Madame Elisabeth privately and with 
much solemnity on the subject of a hat they 
had found in her room. They asked where she 
got it, and how long she had had it, and why she 
kept it. She answered that it had belonged to 
Louis XVI., and that she kept it as a memento. 
Presumably this was true, though the hat might, 
perhaps, have been a remnant of the disguise 
provided for the Toulan-de Jarjayes attempt at 
escape. At any rate the municipal officers took 
the episode with a truly comic seriousness, and 
replying that the hat was a " suspicious circum- 
stance," insisted on carrying it away. 

Madame Tison reproached herself bitterly for 
all the trouble she had caused by her accusa- 
tions, and tormenting herself with remorse in 
the confinement of the Temple, she at last went 
mad. The first the prisoners knew of this was 
when one day la Tison commenced to talk aloud 
to herself. At this the young Princess started to 



184 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

laugh, and her mother and aunt ''looked at her 
with an air of satisfaction," observing with plea- 
sure her rare moment of gaiety. La Tison's 
condition soon grew very serious. " She raved 
of her crimes, and of her denunciations of 
prisoners, and of scaffolds, the Queen, the royal 
family, and all our misfortunes " . . . writes Madame 
Royale. *' Her dreams must have been dreadful, 
for she screamed in her sleep so loud that we 
heard her." In her extravagant repentance this 
poor creature was constantly flinging herself at 
the feet of the Princesses to beg their forgiveness, 
and, despite the injuries she had done them, 
the royal ladies treated her very gently. At last 
the unfortunate woman was pronounced quite 
mad, and taken away to the hospital. There 
a woman belonging to the police was placed 
to watch her, to gather whatever words she 
might let fall in her frenzy about the royal 
prisoners. 

Two things were mentioned as having hap- 
pened at this time to make escape difficult. The 
Tison denunciations naturally attracted public 
attention — averted for a moment by the thousand 
other worries and troubles which Paris bore on 
her shoulders — to the Temple. However, de- 
spite this renewed attention, the prisoners might 
have been able to join in further daring schemes 
had it not been for the little King's illness. 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 185 

Early in May the boy complained of a pain 
in his side, and one evening he was seized 
with a violent fever and headache. The pain 
in his side also continued, and was so bad he 
would not lie in bed, because he felt as if he 
were suffocating. Marie-Antoinette was greatly 
alarmed, and demanded a doctor. One of the 
guards, however, having seen the child in the 
morning, when the fever was naturally less 
severe, reported to the Council that there was 
nothing wrong. The Queen's demand was in 
consequence laughed at, and she was assured 
there was nothing the matter with the little 
prisoner, and that it was only her maternal 
anxiety that made her magnify trifles. At last 
a doctor came, and on his second visit, when 
he saw the King in the afternoon (he came first 
in the morning, and gained much the same 
impression as had the guard) he pronounced the 
illness even more serious than Marie-Antoinette 
had feared. For several weeks the doctor 
visited Louis-Charles every day, and took the 
trouble, moreover, to hold consultations outside 
with Brunier, the physician who had tended 
the royal children since their infancy, and could 
therefore give the prison doctor information 
about the boy's constitution. 

Louis XVI I. 's illness was a serious one. His 
sister tells us that from this time his health 



186 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

began to decline, and was never re-established. 
"Want of air and exercise," says she, ''did him 
great mischief, as well as the kind of life this 
poor child led, who, at eight years of age, passed 
his days amongst the tears and terrors of his 
friends, and in constant agony and anxiety." It 
is possible, however, that Madame Royale, living 
as she did so narrow and sad a life, somewhat 
exaggerated the seriousness of the child's con- 
dition. 

During these days when Marie- Antoinette was 
plotting for her escape, and little Louis was suffer- 
ing from his illness, Paris without was growing 
more and more preoccupied with the fate of the 
captive King. This child, indeed, had become 
the bogey of all true republicans. Was there 
sound of a popular uprising in the city — it meant 
Louis XVII. had escaped from the Temple. Did 
one of their number show lessened enthusiasm in 
the cause of liberty — it must be because he was 
conspiring to put Louis XVII. on the throne. 
Louis XVII., a constant possibility, an unceasing 
danger, hung always over the republic. Hardly 
a day passed that there was not heard some new 
and alarming rumour about the King whom Paris 
had dethroned but could not get rid of. 

In the first place, the almost successful plot of 
escape disturbed the revolutionaries and put them 
into a state of continued uneasiness about this 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 187 

invaluable prisoner of theirs. Even more alarm- 
ing were the frequently repeated expressions of 
sympathy for the child on the part of the people. 
That this sympathy with Louis XVII., both as 
a person and as the representative of a cause, 
was very strong, even in Paris, is incontestable. 
We read of men who were arrested for crying, 
"Long live Louis XVII.!" of a priest who en- 
dangered himself by praying publicly for ''the 
King," of some one who was accused of having 
written on the walls of a Paris street the words : 
'' Vive le roil Vive Louis X VII. /" One Boucher, 
a dentist, was guillotined in the spring of 1793 
for his anti-revolutionary sentiments, and from 
the scaffold he addressed the spectators as fol- 
lows : **Is it not curious to see a man perish 
for having said we need a king? Yes, we need 
one : Long live Louis XVII. ! " and then, turning 
to the executioner, he said, ** Guillotine me." 
''The national archives," writes M. Len6tre,^ 
"are full of reports attesting to this unanimous, 
despairing demand of a starving people for its 
old masters. ... 'A King or bread!' became the 
cry." 

These cries for Louis XVII. did not come 
entirely, however, from the half-starved and the 
fanatical. The re-establishment of the Bour- 
bons was no mere dream. Half Paris lived in 

^ Le Baron de Batz^ by G. Lenotre. 



188 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

momentary fear — or hope — of the re-establish- 
ment. If there was a commotion by night people 
woke up with the question on their lips, ** Have 
they put the little Capet on the throne ? " It was 
reported the Convention had broken up. There 
were people who capered and danced about in the 
streets for joy. " We are rid of these brigands," 
they cried ; *' they are going at last ! " and all their 
talk was of the boy in the Temple. This public 
preoccupation with the thought of Louis XVII. 
was not as ill-founded as might be supposed. 
There were times during the spring of 1793 
when the re-establishment was a distinct and 
very real possibility. 

In May an astonishing revelation was made 
to the effect that there was a conspiracy being 
nursed to attack the Temple, to take possession 
of the little Capet, and with Danton as regent, to 
put before the people this young King with the 
constitution of 1791 in his hand. That Danton 
ever really intended to do this has not been 
proved. 

There is no doubt, however, of the genuine- 
ness of another plot, existence of which was made 
public a few weeks later. All the details of this 
conspiracy for the escape and establishment of 
Louis XVII. were discovered. The date set was 
the 15th July, the conspirators were to meet in 
the Place de la Revolution, and divide into two 



A LITTLE KING OF SORROWS 189 

columns. One column would save the child from 
the Temple, the other would go to the Convention 
and force it to proclaim him king, with Marie- 
Antoinette as regent. The organising spirit of 
this daring scheme was General Dillon, who was 
arrested and, strangely enough, set free. He 
died, however, about a year later, crying from the 
scaffold, '' Long live Louis XVII. ! " 

Listening to all this talk, and seeing this, to 
them, dangerous plot exposed, the revolutionary 
leaders felt something must be done to render 
it impossible for the little prisoner to escape. 
Another, though less important, factor was added 
to make them disapprove of the present state of 
things in the Temple. This was the behaviour 
of Marie-Antoinette towards her son, or at least 
the reports of this behaviour which reached the 
outside world. If these reports are true, it 
seems that misfortune did not cure the poor 
Queen of her fatal habit of indiscretion. The 
reports stated that since Louis XVI. 's death 
she had treated the child as King, had accorded 
him special honours, had given him the best place 
at table, and carried out as far as possible the 
minutise of royal etiquette. As might be sup- 
posed, the idea that a child was being reared in 
kingly habits in the very midst of revolutionary 
Paris, and under the eye of republican guards, 
was unbearable. The child — in the present 



190 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

circumstances — was at once a menace and an 
insult to the liberty of France. Something had 
to be done at once. 

Something was done at once. A step was 
taken the recollection of which is one of the 
darkest blots on the much spattered memory of 
the Revolution. 



CHAPTER XI 

THAT ENIGMA SIMON 

npHE association of Simon the cobbler with 
-*- the little King of the Temple is without 
doubt the most striking episode in that short 
life, into which a freak of destiny crowded so 
much of tragedy, romance, and mystery. To 
Simon, the outrageous, has been given a place 
of dishonour amongst the worst characters in 
history, and in that same detested little circle 
that holds Nero, Judas, the Borgias, and all 
the heroes of infamy, we have placed this humble 
shoemaker of the Revolution. But has Simon 
deserved all the hate and abuse that have been 
hurled at his memory ? Is his place with 
Nero and the rest, or does he not rather 
belong amongst the mighty army of the un- 
kind, the unsympathetic, the unheroic, small 
bad men of the past ? After studying what 
little there remains of positive evidence, it is 
this latter conclusion which seems more just. 
It is not that Simon has been misjudged. He 
has merely been overrated. Simon was simply 



192 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

a bad man. He was not, he never could have 
been, one of the great villains. 

It was on the 3rd July that Louis XVH., then 
a few months over eight years of age and just 
recovering from an illness, was separated from 
his mother, and all who knew and cared for 
him, to be given into the charge of this man. 

It was between nine and ten o'clock in the 
evening. The child was sound asleep. The 
three Princesses sat in the same room, sewing 
and reading. A shawl was hung in front of 
the boy to keep the light from his eyes. Sud- 
denly six officers entered the room. 

**We have come," said they, *'to notify you 
of the order whereby the son of Capet is to be 
separated from his mother and family." 

" My mother," says Madame Royale, '' was 
stricken to the earth by this cruel order ; she 
would not part with her son ; she actually tried 
to defend against the officers the bed where she 
had placed him. At this violence the shawl 
was shaken down, and falling on the child's 
head, wakened him. In a moment he under- 
stood. He threw himself into the arms of my 
mother, and entreated with loud cries not to be 
separated from her." The struggle continued ; 
the officers threatened to call up the guard and 
use force, if Marie- Antoinette would not yield. 

''You would better kill me than take my child 



THAT ENIGMA— SIMON 193 

from me ! " replied the Queen, undismayed at the 
threats. 

Then the officers declared that, if she did not 
relinquish the child, they would kill both him 
and his sister. At this threat, though the men 
had, of course, no intention of carrying it out, 
Marie-Antoinette gave in. 

Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale dressed 
the King — the Queen's strength was spent. Every 
little garment was turned and re-turned, and passed 
from one Princess to the other, so that as much 
time as possible might be consumed and the ter- 
rible parting postponed, if only for a few minutes. 
At last it was finished. Marie-Antoinette took 
her son in her arms and gave him herself to the 
officers. The child clung to her, crying passion- 
ately. Then the men carried him away. He 
looked at his family for practically the last time. 
Madame Elisabeth and his sister he met again — 
though only once — at that terrible moment when 
the infamous accusation was dragged from him. 
His mother he never saw again except in his 
dreams. 

It had been ordered that Louis-Charles should 
be put in a room apart, **the most secure in all 
the Temple," that he should be given into the 
hands of '' a tutor chosen by the Council-General 
of the Commune." Still crying — they tell us he 
wept for two days without ceasing — they brought 
13 



194 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

him to the room where formerly Louis XVI. had 
been lodged, and there he found awaiting him 
the chosen tutor, the cobbler Simon. For hours 
he crouched miserably on a chair in the farthest 
corner of the room. Simon questioned him. 
He gave only short answers spoken through 
his sobs. Simon must have felt it was no very 
attractive position the Commune had given him, 
to bear constant companionship to this heart- 
broken, imprisoned child. 

Let us leave the King of France to weep on 
his chair in the corner while we look back at the 
history of his new tutor. Antoine Simon was the 
son of a provincial butcher, and was now a man 
of between fifty and sixty. He had been always 
poor, and was quite illiterate — the year before 
he had had to learn to sign his name before 
he could be admitted to the Council-General of 
the Commune. In appearance he was robust 
and over the medium height, his hair was 
straight and black and hung down long, his 
complexion was swarthy. Till now he had 
passed amongst those who knew him as a 
good fellow enough. He was an ardent re- 
publican, and had already served the Revolution 
in many ways. Some time before, in the early 
days of the imprisonment, he had come to the 
Temple to act as one of the inspectors. While 
he was there he had attended to his duties with 



THAT ENIGMA— SIMON 195 

the greatest care. As to his treatment of the 
prisoners, accounts contradict one another in ^ 
truly ludicrous fashion. 

"This man never passed before the royal 
family without affecting the most despicable 
insolence" — so writes Clery, who was in the 
Temple at that period. On the other hand, 
Goret/ one of the municipal officers at the 
prison, writes : *' Everything the prisoners 
wanted was procured for them by the man 
Simon . . . who had been established per- 
manently in the Temple to fulfil the functions, 
more or less, of a factotum. He was a wretched 
shoemaker, uneducated and ignorant, but ap- 
parently not so ill-disposed as other historians 
have made him appear. The Princesses sum- 
moned him fairly often to bring them anything 
they might require. His manner in their presence 
was rather free-and-easy. ' What do you wish 
for, ladies ? ' he would say, and he would then 
try to do as they desired. If they asked for 
something that was not in the stores of the 
Temple, he would run out to the shops. I 
have heard the Queen say, ' We are very for- 
tunate in having that good M. Simon, who 
gets us everything we ask for.' " 

This enigmatic character had married, for the 
second time, a few years before. His new wife 

^ Lenotre, " Last Days of Marie-Antoinette." 



196 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

was a woman of mature years and small per- 
sonal charms. She was a squat, tubby little 
woman, with heavy masculine features and a 
pimpled face. She had formerly been a servant, 
and it is possible that the small annuities she 
received from two former mistresses made up 
in the eyes of the impecunious Simon for her 
lack of beauty. She was not, however, as un- 
attractive in character as in appearance, being 
a kind, motherly old dame, fond of children 
and anxious to do all she could to make the 
little King comfortable — for she shared the 
duties of her husband, receiving an annual 
salary of four thousand livres, while Simon got 
six thousand. It was indeed partly on account 
of the capability of his wife, who had dis- 
tinguished herself by the intelligence and activity 
she showed in nursing the wounded on the loth 
August, that Simon was chosen for this respon- 
sible and well-paid post. But notwithstanding 
the capabilities of his wife, the selection of 
Simon, the illiterate cobbler, seems certainly an 
absurdly inappropriate choice as tutor for a 
child. Various explanations have been given 
why he — probably the most unsuitable for such 
a task — was picked out from all the men of 
Paris. Without doubt, his well-known energy 
and faithfulness to the republic — it was he who 
had discovered and checked one of the most 



THAT ENIGMA— SIMON 197 

important schemes to save the royal prisoners 
—stood in his favour. Then, too, there was 
something grimly amusing to the republican 
leaders in the idea of making a cobbler the 
teacher and master of the son of him who had 
so lately been their king. It was probably 
Chaumette, Procurator of the Commune, and 
therefore the governing spirit at the Temple, 
who made the selection. 

Chaumette with quaint generosity expressed 
his views about Louis XVII.'s future in these 
words : ** I wish to have him receive a certain 
amount of education," said he. *' I shall take 
him away from his family and make him lose 
all idea of his rank." This magnanimous 
purpose on the part of the son of a country 
shoemaker cannot but tickle the humorous. 
Chaumette, it is said, cherished the hope of 
teaching the boy a trade, and of making an 
honest workman of him — of him, the heir of a 
thousand years of kings ! 

For such a purpose as this Simon was an 
ideal instrument. There are those who assure 
us that instructions far more sinister than 
Chaumette's were given to Simon. 

''What have you decided about the whelp?" 
— for such was one of the popular names for the 
son of the she- wolf, Marie- Antoinette — '' What 
do you wish to do with him ? To exile him ? " 



198 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

To this question, which it is alleged Simon 
asked of the committee in charge of the matter, 
the supposed answer was " No." 

''Do you wish to kill him, then? To poison 
him?" 

'' No." 

'* What do you wish, then ?" 

*' To get rid of him." 

*' He was not killed," thus runs the comment 
of those who believe and tell the story, ''he was 
not exiled — he was got rid of." 

Probably fabulous, this tale is one out of the 
mass of contradictions that cluster about the 
history of Simon. It would be well if we could 
place as little faith in all the terrible stories 
that are told of him, and of the six months 
that marked his guardianship of the King of 
France. 

The child, weeping in his corner, refused for 
days to eat or to talk. He was completely 
mystified at what had happened to him, and in 
despair, the blank, hopeless sorrow of childhood. 
Very soon a rumour got about Paris that the 
boy had escaped, that he had been seen on 
the Boulevards and had been carried in triumph 
to St. Cloud. A crowd rushed to the Temple, 
and hearing from the guard, which was angry 
at not seeing him, that Louis XVH. was no 
longer in the prison, they became greatly excited. 



THAT ENIGMA— SIMON 199 

A deputation from the Convention came hot- 
foot to investigate, and found the child playing 
quietly and sadly in his room. 

Orders were oriven that he should be taken 
at once — and regularly every day after that — 
into the garden, so that the men of the guard 
might see him and witness to his safety. No 
sooner did he reach the open air than he com- 
menced to cry loudly for his mother, and 
having attracted the attention of the guards, he 
demanded, '* By what law am I separated from 
my mother ? " This was a spirited boy indeed, 
who, after miserable days of little food and 
many tears, could stand, a mite of eight, before 
a crowd of rough officers and order them to 
explain by what law they treated him as they 
did. But his pitiful, brave little outburst was 
soon checked and gained him nothing. 

Upstairs the deputation, one member of which 
was Drouet, the postmaster of Varennes, was 
visiting Marie-Antoinette, the bereaved mother. 

Drouet made her a high-sounding speech. 
** We have come," he said in the course of his 
remarks, '* to find out if you need anything." 

*' I need my son," replied the Queen simply, 
but the deputation answered his removal was 
a necessary precaution, and the mother's com- 
plaint, like the boy's, ended fruitlessly. 

It was inevitable that the child's grief should 



200 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

assuage itself somewhat, that Louis-Charles, with 
that merciful short memory of the very young, 
should become somewhat reconciled to his new 
life. It has been said that from the beginning 
Simon treated him with systematic and delibe- 
rate cruelty. The pages of M. Chantelauze and 
of M. de Beauchesne are full of appalling anec- 
dotes of brutality, of accounts of positive and 
purposeless torture inflicted on the little prisoner. 
All these things, however, are far from being 
proved. 

Take, for example, what M. de Beauchesne 
tells us happened one night in the middle of 
winter, several months after Simon came into 
his office of tutor. His story is that the boy 
had risen in his sleep, and kneeling by his 
bed, was saying a fevered dream-prayer. Simon 
waked and called his wife's attention to the little 
somnambulist. Then he got up, took a jug of 
icy cold water and flung it over the head 
of the sleeping boy. Louis-Charles, '* without a 
cry," got up off the floor and returned to his 
soaking bed, where the only dry spot was the 
pillow. On this he seated himself, shivering. 
Simon was not satisfied. He got up again, 
caught the child by the hand and shook him 
violently. 

''I'll teach you," said he, **not to say Pater- 
nosters and get up in the night like a Trappist." 



THAT ENIGMA— SIMON 201 

And then, with a burst of fury, he picked up 
his great hobnailed boot, and in a paroxysm 
of frenzy flung himself on his victim. The 
child just in time caught in his two hands Simon's 
uplifted arm. 

"What have I done that you want to kill 
me ? " he asked, and Simon, brought to himself, 
threw the child back into his bed, where he lay 
through the rest of the night, silent and trem- 
bling, on the soaked, icy sheets. 

This terrible story — a fair sample of many others 
— fails altogether to be convincing, because it is 
impossible to see how the incidents recounted 
ever came to the ears of the author. Where 
did the author learn in such detail exactly 
what happened on the night in question (the 
date is even given) ? Simon surely would never 
have told a story so little to his credit, neither 
would his wife, and the poor little King never 
had a chance to bear witness about the details 
of his imprisonment. Yet these three are the 
only persons who were present. The conclu- 
sion is obvious. This story, like many another 
of Simon's brutality, is valueless, except as pic- 
turesque and harrowing fiction. Of actual proof 
that it really happened there is not a scrap. 

That Simon was cruel is undoubtedly true, 
however. It is merely on these morbidly fanciful 
romances of brutality that doubt is cast— romances 



202 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

which it is plain could have had no foundation 
in statements emanating from the three persons 
whose testimony alone would have been of any 
value regarding what took place between Simon 
and the child. 

Simon was ordered never, under any pretext, 
to leave his charge. He could not go out of 
the Temple tower even for a moment. He 
was as much a prisoner as the little Capet 
himself Such a life would have worn out the 
nerves even of a gentle man, and Simon, accord- 
ing to all accounts, was rough, undisciplined, and 
drunken. It is little to be wondered that when 
confinement and boredom became unendurable 
he made the helpless boy — necessarily hateful 
to one of his ardent republican views — the victim 
of his frayed nerves. 

It is not hard to understand how unhappy 
Louis-Charles must have found himself with 
his tutor. There is none quicker than a gently- 
reared child to notice ugliness of appearance and 
dress, uncouthness of manners and roughness of 
speech. How repulsive must have been in his 
eyes the cobbler with his lank hair, and la Simon 
with her pimples and her coarse blue apron ! 
How he must have shuddered at the touch of 
Simon's hard hands and the feel of la Simon's 
kisses ! How he must have longed for the dear 
caresses of his beautiful, dainty mother, and for 



THAT ENIGMA— SIMON 203 

the sound of her gentle voice! How terrible 
must have been his despair when, after his out- 
burst in the garden, he realised he might never 
see her again ! Poor little King, in his loneliness 
— so infinitely worse than that of any Crusoe on 
his island — he had a grief almost greater than 
he could bear. Surely there was no need for 
romantic history to paint into this picture, so 
simple and so terrible in its tragedy, the high, 
garish colours of an exaggerated Simon the 
Ogre, his mouth full of oaths, his arm ever 
raised in a blow. The Simon of reality, dirty, 
ill-mannered, repulsive, makes the picture little 
less terrible, infinitely more convincing. 

Marie-Antoinette sometimes saw her child, 
though he never saw her. " We often went 
up to the tower," says Madame Royale, "be- 
cause my brother went there from the other 
side. The only pleasure my mother enjoyed 
was seeing him through a chink as he passed 
at a distance." Standing behind a door for 
hours together, the Queen would wait for these 
glimpses of her son. So to wait for him was 
''her only hope, her only thought." A note 
written surreptitiously by Madame Elisabeth to 
a faithful friend during the summer says, ''We 
see the little one every day from the staircase 
window, but that need not prevent you from 
giving us news of him." Early in August, 



204 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Marie-Antoinette was taken away from the 
Temple to go to the Conciergerie, and the two 
Princesses were left alone. 

Until about this time there seems to be no 
reason to believe that Louis XVII. suffered 
cruel treatment or even physical privations, 
though he was often profoundly miserable, and 
received frequent humiliations and many unkind 
words. Physically, he was well cared for. He 
had exercise outdoors every day, he had ample 
food, and capable Madame Simon kept him 
clean and saw to it that he changed his linen. 
He had even toys to play with. At about the 
time of Marie-Antoinette's departure from the 
Temple, however, this regime changed. The 
reason for this change is of all the dark epi- 
sodes of the French Revolution quite the most 
shameful — this innocent, affectionate child was 
to be forced to testify, and that in the most 
horrible way imaginable, against his mother. 

Whatever defence may have been made of 
Simon hitherto, there is no condemnation too 
dark for the man who undertook to undermine 
the intellect and physique of this helpless boy 
for so vile a purpose. It appears that it was 
Hebert (Pere Duchesne) who conceived the 
infamous idea — "the most atrocious, surely, 
that was ever formed in a human brain" — 
and it has been said that the real reason why 



THAT ENIGMA— SIMON 205 

Simon was placed in charge of the child was 
that he might carry it out. 

However this may be, Simon brought to 
bear a fiendish ingenuity on his loathsome task. 
In the first place, he forced Louis-Charles — 
naturally moderate in his appetite — to eat more 
than he wished, and to drink much wine, which 
he detested. The boy's exercise was cut down, 
there was less time spent in the garden, and 
there were no more walks at all on the top 
of the tower. He was allowed to read nothing 
but the most obscene books. In short, every- 
thing was done to render him morally and 
physically irresponsible. The poor child could 
not but succumb; **even a grown man could 
not have resisted such treatment." 

Towards the end of August the King fell 
ill, and la Simon, meaning, doubtless, for the 
best, insisted on prescribing for him herself. 
The physic she gave disagreed with him 
badly ; he grew more feverish and lay in bed 
for several days. As soon as he recovered, 
Simon recommenced his treatment. In October 
the vile seed which the cobbler had been plant- 
ing and tending so carefully bore its fruit — 
poor Louis XVII. was made to commit the 
lowest of crimes. 

It was on the 6th October that the Mayor 
of Paris, Hebert, Chaumette, and some others 



206 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

came to the Temple to see the result of Simon's 
handiwork. Everything was well prepared. On 
the day before, Simon had kept the child fast- 
ing ; on the 6th itself he had forced him to 
eat and drink to excess. The poor creature 
was but a toy in their hands. He said what 
they wished, he signed in a straggling hand 
as they bade him. This unhappy, feeble child 
was an easy victim. As to what Louis-Charles 
was forced to say, the accusations were of two 
sorts : one relating to various plots made by 
the Queen to escape from the Temple, and 
implicating some of the officers, the other 
against the personal honour of his mother — a 
matter at once so horrible and so absurd that 
we can most wisely follow the example of 
Carlyle, who, in speaking of it, said, ''There is 
one thing concerning Marie-Antoinette and her 
little Son wherewith Human Speech had better 
not further be soiled." 

On the following day, practically the same 
party returned again for the purpose of securing, 
if possible, admissions from the two Princesses 
in support of the accusation. Madame Royale was 
brought down into the presence of her brother. 
They had not met for several months, and they 
flung themselves into one another's arms joy- 
fully. The child repeated his testimony of the 
day before. The young girl was asked questions 



THAT ENIGMA— SIMON 207 

"about a thousand shocking things" of which 
they accused her mother and aunt. Scarcely- 
understanding what was meant, she had still 
the presence of mind to refuse to be bullied 
into damaging statements, and at last she was 
taken back to her room, and Madame Elisabeth 
brought down. 

Daujon, who took down the testimony, and 
who himself did not believe one word of it, 
gave the following account of the episode : — 

''The young Prince," said he, ''was seated 
in an arm-chair, swinging his little legs ; for his 
feet did not reach the ground. He was examined 
as to the statements in question, and was asked 
if they were true. He answered in the affirma- 
tive. Instantly Madame Elisabeth cried out, 
'Oh, the monster!'" 

" As for me," Daujon added, " I could not 
regard this answer as coming from the child 
himself, for his air of uneasiness and his general 
bearing inclined me to believe that it was a 
suggestion emanating from some one else — the 
effect of his fear of punishment or ill-treatment 
if he failed to comply. I fancy that Madame 
Elisabeth cannot really have been deceived either, 
but that her surprise at the child's answer wrung 
that exclamation from her." 

It is a harrowing exercise of imagination to 
try to picture what must have been Marie- 



208 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Antoinette's feelings when at her trial she heard 
this infamous accusation brought against her by 
her beloved son. 

A juryman said, ''Citizen President, I ask 
you to point out to the accused that she has 
made no reply to the charge of which Citizen 
Hebert has spoken with regard to what passed 
between her and her son." 

The Queen's reply was simple. *' If I have 
not answered," said she, *' it is because nature 
itself refutes such a charge against a mother. 
I appeal to all the mothers who are here." 
At this so great was the sympathy for Marie- 
Antoinette that Hebert must have felt he had 
indeed sinned in vain. Truly, no crime was 
ever at once so odious and so stupid as this, 
which harmed none but the criminal and brought 
sympathy to the poor woman it was intended 
to destroy. 

Finally, they asked the Queen if she had 
anything more to say. This was her reply : 
** For my defence, nothing ; for your remorse, 
much. I was a Queen, and you dethroned me. 
I was a wife, and you have killed my husband. 
I was a mother, and you have torn my children 
away from me. There is left only my blood, 
make haste to shed it, that you may be satisfied." 
Marie-Antoinette was condemned to die next 
day. During the night that intervened she wrote 



THAT ENIGMA— SIMON 209 

to Madame Elisabeth a long letter, dated *'the 
1 6th October, at half-past four in the morning." 
In this she said, '* Let my son never forget 
the last words of his father, which I repeat 
here : * He is never to attempt to avenge our 
death.' I have also to speak to you of some- 
thing very painful to me. I know how much 
this child must have grieved you. Forgive him, 
my sister. Think of his age, and of how easy 
it is to make a child say what people wish him 
to, and what, moreover, he does not under- 
stand." In a postscript especially addressed to 
her son, the Queen said again, *' He must never 
dream of avenging our death. I pardon all my 
enemies for the ill they have done." 

The next morning — it was the i6th October 
1793 — the Queen was driven in a cart from 
the Conciergerie to her scaffold. At a quarter 
past twelve she died bravely and a queen, as 
she lived. 

The King of the Temple was an orphan. 



14 



CHAPTER XII 

THE ORPHAN 

THE boy, Louis-Charles, knew nothing of his 
mother's death. Indeed, with a considera- 
tion of which we should not have supposed 
them capable, neither the Simons nor those who 
succeeded them in the charge of the little King 
ever told him of his loss. Louis XVII. was 
an orphan for almost two years without ever 
realising it. 

A dreadful story has been told by one of the 
picturesque historians of this period. It appears 
that Simon knew Marie- Antoinette was to die, 
but was ignorant of the exact moment when 
the sentence was to be executed. During the 
day of the i6th October he heard a disturbance 
outside the Temple. Simon thought this was 
probably occasioned by the passage of troops 
to attend at the Queen's death. La Simon 
disagreed. " They would never make such a 
fuss about her," said she scornfully. As neither 
one could convince the other, the two Simons 
made a-bet on the subject, wagering some eau- 




SIMON 
From a sketch by Gabrielin the Carnartet Micseitm 



THE ORPHAN 211 

de-vie. Presently Simon learned he had been 
right, the Queen was dead. That evening — was 
ever an incident more grotesquely harrowing? 
— the boy shared in the cobbler's winnings, and 
all unconsciously drank to celebrate his mother's 
death. 

It might have consoled the dying Queen to 
know that by her death her son's lot would 
be much improved. Simon, after securing the 
boy's calumniation of his mother, had no further 
reason for ill-treating his prisoner. A little time 
after Marie- Antoinette's execution, Louis-Charles 
signed a second — and possibly even more absurd 
— accusation against his aunt and sister. After 
that he was left in peace. 

Notwithstanding this improvement, however, 
the King was physically and mentally in a bad 
condition. In October, for fear he might escape, 
the privilege of taking walks in the garden was 
removed both from him and from the Simons, 
and although he was still allowed to take the air 
on the top of the tower, it was a cruel depriva- 
tion to the child not to be allowed to go into the 
garden. There was never any fire in the boy's 
room. The days he could pass with the Simons, 
who had a fire, but at night he was forced to 
remain in a damp, cold atmosphere. It is no 
wonder that he began to alter in health and 
appearance. He fell, moreover, into a state of 



212 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

black melancholy. He did not realise the true 
wickedness of his accusations against Marie- 
Antoinette and his aunt, but he did, in some 
vague, childish way, feel that he had sinned against 
those he loved best, and he brooded over what 
he had done, turning it hopelessly over and over 
in his little mind. 

It was a man named Barelle, a stone-mason 
and one of the municipal officers, who at this 
time brought a trifle of cheerfulness into this 
poor little life. This good man, a simple fellow 
enough, seems to have been very fond of chil- 
dren, and to have been especially drawn towards 
the small King. The two became fast friends. 
Louis-Charles would count the days which must 
elapse between the stone-mason's visits, and 
used to tell Simon long in advance when his big 
friend was due to arrive at the Temple. Of all 
his kindness, the child must have appreciated 
most Barelle's thoughtfulness in bringing to see 
him in the billiard-room — for there had been a 
billiard-table set up in the tower — little Clouet, 
the eight-year-old daughter of the laundress who 
was in the habit of washing the prisoner's 
linen. Louis-Charles had not since he came 
to the Temple seen a child of his own age, 
and since his separation from the royal family 
had seen no children at all. It may be imagined, 
therefore, how great a pleasure it was to him 



THE ORPHAN 213 

to have a chance of playing with this little 
girl. 

Louis XVII., though his kingdom was a 
pitiful one, was still at heart a king. Some 
royal instinct in him taught the child that kings 
do not accept favours without making return. 
It must have been a troubled moment when the 
poor lad set himself to finding some way of re- 
compensing the good Barelle for his kindness. 
At last a bright inspiration came to him. He 
obtained from Simon permission to save from 
their table a roast chicken, this to be pre- 
sented to Barelle, who, according to his calcula- 
tions, should arrive on the morrow. Next day 
the boy waited impatiently, but no Barelle 
appeared. On the second day, however, the 
mason arrived, and Louis-Charles ran up to 
him eagerly with his roasted chicken. Barelle 
at first declined it. The child pressed it upon 
him. 

''You ought not to refuse it," said Simon. 
"For two days now he has been keeping it 
for you," and he wrapped the pitiful little pre- 
sent, Louis XVI I. 's stale chicken, in a bit of 
paper. 

'* Poor little lad," said the mason, a little 
chokily, as he pocketed the gift, " I wish I 
could put you in my other pocket and carry 
you away from here as well." 



214 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Tears came into the eyes of the child, and 
Simon said to him in uncouth but well-meant 
consolation, *' Never mind, my boy ; when you 
get out of here I will teach you to be a shoe- 
maker." What greater ambition — so, we sup- 
pose, ran the thoughts of the republican cobbler 
— could any heart hold, even that of the heir 
of the Bourbons ? 

Louis-Charles had another distraction besides 
the society of Barelle and the child Clouet. In 
the lumber-room of the Temple had been found 
a mechanical toy, an artificial canary-bird, caged, 
which could flap its wings and sing a tune called 
*' The King's March." Permission was gained 
to have this put in order — at considerable ex- 
pense, as it happened — and the toy was placed in 
Louis's room. At first the prisoner was delighted, 
but soon, as is the habit of children where purely 
mechanical playthings are concerned, he grew 
bored with the toy which did always so mono- 
tonously the same thing, and sang always the 
same air. He was greatly pleased, therefore, 
when some real canaries were brought to him to 
be the companion of his uninspired toy. The 
child amused himself day after day in taking 
care of them, giving them their food and keep- 
ing their glasses filled with water. One, his 
special favourite, he decorated with a pink 
anklet, so that it might easily be distinguished 



THE ORPHAN 215 

from the rest. Presently, however, an absurd 
little tragedy occurred. Some municipal officers 
were visiting the Temple, and amongst them 
was one of those men, apparently so common 
at that period, who were absolutely lacking 
in the faintest shadow of a sense of humour, 
and were endowed, moreover, with a large 
capacity for making fools of themselves com- 
placently. 

*' What is this ? " he cried indignantly. *' Here 
is a bird singing a proscribed royalist song ! 
And what does this decoration mean ? It seems 
to show a distinction and a preference quite alien 
to our republican ideas." 

It is almost incredible that, within an hour, 
the cage was taken away from the poor child, 
and that this affair was afterwards dignified 
by the absurd title of *' the conspiracy of the 
canaries." 

In December la Simon fell ill, and a doctor 
was called in to visit her. Just as he entered the 
room Simon — in jest perhaps — raised his hand 
against the boy. The doctor rushed forward and 
caught Simon's arm. 

'' What are you doing, rascal ? " he cried. 

This interference the cobbler took in good 
part, which seems to indicate he had not really 
intended to do Louis any harm. The child was 
none the less appreciative. He had received 



216 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

another favour ; again he must make return. 
This time there was no need to rack his brains. 
He would reward the doctor after the fashion 
which had so greatly pleased the good Barelle. 
Next day the doctor returned, and was inter- 
cepted in the corridor by Louis XVH. The boy 
had his speech prepared, and handing the man 
two pears saved from his lunch of the day before, 
he said, " Yesterday you showed that you were 
interested in me. I thank you. I have only 
these to offer to show my gratitude. You will 
give me a great deal of pleasure if you will 
accept them." 

The doctor pressed the boy's hand and 
pocketed the pears. When he went away — so 
the story runs — there were tears in his eyes. 
Truly, never was the little King more pathetic 
than at these moments of pitiful royal gene- 
rosity. 

Meanwhile, Simon was growing more and 
more discontented with his post at the Temple. 
We have seen how walks in the garden had 
been forbidden. To this deprivation were added 
several other material annoyances. The luxu- 
riousness of the table, something which had 
particularly appealed to Simon and his wife, was 
reduced. The billiard games, which had been 
the cobbler's main diversion, were suppressed. 
These things were small enough in themselves, 



THE ORPHAN 217 

but they looked very large in the eyes of the 
Simons, whose lives were nearly as restricted as 
that of the prisoner they guarded. It is, how- 
ever, more than a little surprising to find that 
Simon, when at the New Year (1794) it became 
necessary for him to choose between his warder- 
ship at the Temple and his seat on the Commune, 
chose the latter. That this poverty-stricken 
old cobbler should have preferred the totally 
unpaid post on the Commune to his post at the 
Temple with its salary of 10,000 livres, even 
though his work at the Temple was somewhat 
uncongenial, is astonishing — it is more than 
astonishing ; it is almost a mystery. 

On the 19th January Simon, as always 
puzzling and enigmatic, left the Temple for 
some reason which has never adequately been 
explained. 

To the vindictive royalists Simon's ultimate 
fate seemed a just retribution, for a few months 
later, on the day following the 9th Thermidor, 
he perished on the scaffold with Robespierre. 
So sudden was the cobbler's downfall and 
execution, that it is said his wife had hardly 
commenced to trouble herself at his prolonged 
absence from home when news came that he 
was dead. 

As for la Simon herself, her story after she left 
the Temple was far more remarkable than her 



218 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

husband's. Falling ill after she left the Temple, 
she was admitted, in 1796, to the Hospital for 
Incurables, where she remained until her death, 
some thirteen years later. 

During her stay at the Incurables, la Simon 
made a certain very extraordinary statement 
about Louis XVII. — a statement which aroused 
much attention at that time, and one which is 
well worthy of attention now. She said that the 
Dauphin had escaped from the Temple, and that 
the boy who died there was not the King of 
France, but a substitute. Dying, she affirmed 
this story, and it seems likely that, whatever may 
have been the facts in the matter, la Simon 
believed implicitly in the truth of the story she 
told. 

In considering this statement of the widow 
Simon we come, for the first time in this nar- 
rative, to any mention of that uncertainty sur- 
rounding the death of the child of the Temple, 
which has made the story of Louis XVII. the 
most striking of historical mysteries. On the 
subject of this mystery more than a thousand 
books and pamphlets have been published, and to 
the solving of it scores of historians have given 
years of research. There have been and are still 
monthly magazines published on the question, 
and it may be said without any danger of con- 
tradiction that there are to-day alive many serious 



THE ORPHAN 219 

students who would give half their possessions 
to secure in exchange a definite proof of just 
what happened to King Louis XVII. 

Did the child die in the Temple as conven- 
tional history tells us ? Did he escape from the 
Temple ? If he did escape, what subsequently 
happened to him? 

These are questions which have never been 
answered convincingly. 

In the present book will be attempted, in a 
simple fashion, something which, I believe, has 
not been done before. There will be told, in 
turn and without prejudice, the two stories of 
the little King : first, conventional history's 
account of how he died in the Temple ; after- 
wards, the contrasting and more thrilling story of 
how he escaped, and of how, years later, he was 
resuscitated in the shape of some forty young 
men. Hitherto practically all writers on this 
subject, which in France goes by the name of 
'' The Louis XVII. Question," have had a theory 
to prove, have wished, like M. de Beauchesne 
or M. Chantelauze, to show that the child died 
in the Temple ; or like M. Provins or M. Barbey 
— to name two only of the many well-known 
writers on the other side of the question — to 
show that he did not. Necessarily the historian 
with a theory to prove must look at a question in 
a somewhat different manner from that of the 



220 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

writer whose only wish is to sum up, as fairly 
as may be, two diametrically opposed stories, 
and to leave to all who read the privilege of 
individual choice in the answering of this sad 
and mysterious question. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SIX MONTHS OF SILENCE 

THE six months that followed Simon's de- 
parture from the Temple mark the time of 
darkest mystery and horror in the life of Louis 
XVII. ; mysterious, because we know so little of 
what really happened — horrible, because we know 
so much. 

On January 19, 1794, the boy was delivered 
over by Simon "in good health"; on the day 
after the 9th Thermidor, Barras, in triumph, 
visited the Temple and the young prisoner. Of 
how the child of the Temple was treated during 
the intervening six months we know only enough 
to realise that his treatment was the cruellest out- 
rage ever committed in any civilised country. 

When Simon left the Temple there was at first 
question of who should be chosen to succeed him. 
The final decision was that **the Committee of 
Public Safety regards the mission of Simon as 
unnecessary," and declines to appoint a successor. 
'*The members of the Council should be able 
to take charge of the Temple prisoners without 



222 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

assistance." This decision marked the com- 
mencement of a new regime at the Temple. The 
members of the royal family, who till now 
had been treated as prisoners of State, were re- 
duced to the condition of ordinary malefactors. 
As early as November of the year before, the 
Commune had complained bitterly against the 
unfairness which exalted the Capets above other 
prisoners, and against the wastefulness of em- 
ploying two hundred and fifty men every day 
to guard *' the vile relics of tyranny." 

With Simon's departure, the Commune carried 
out its intentions. The children and sister of 
the man who had been their King were re- 
duced to the status of pickpockets and thieves. 
There was no further talk of a ** tutor " for the 
little Capet, or any one to serve the Princesses. 
Other prisoners had no tutors and servants, 
why should they ? Four commissioners were 
sent to the Temple each day to have charge of 
everything. These men remained only twenty- 
four hours ; at the end of this time they were 
removed and a new quartette arrived. 

This less careful arrangement necessitated 
a stricter guarding of the little King. A new 
room was prepared for him — that which formerly 
had been occupied by Clery. The upper half 
of the door of this room was cut away, and the 
space filled in with iron bars. The lower part 



SIX MONTHS OF SILENCE 223 

of the door was strengthened with iron plates. 
In the door was placed a wicket fastened with 
a heavy padlock. 

Into this room Louis entered on January 21, 
the first anniversary of his father's death, though 
whether this coincidence was an irony of fate 
or of his guards we do not know. The 21st 
January was, during the Restoration, celebrated 
at the Temple by the draping of its fagade 
with black cloth surmounted by a cenotaph 
and lighted tapers. In 1794 it was celebrated 
by the placing of Louis XVI.'s only son in this 
guarded room. The door was sealed with locks 
and bolts. It was not opened for more than six 
months. 

Inside the room was a bed, and a sort of 
cradle on which, though much too short for him, 
the child for some reason preferred to sleep, 
a table and some chairs. The windows were 
covered over. He passed his days in a twilight. 
At night he had no light at all. 

His food was passed to him through the wicket 
by a servant, who was forbidden, on pain of 
death, to speak to him. The luxurious meals 
which had delighted Simon and his wife were 
a thing of the past. Louis received each day 
soup, boiled meat, bread and water. In the 
same manner clean linen was given to him. 
From no one did he hear a word, except his 



224 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

guards, who, being renewed daily, used, with 
the coming of each new detachment, to call 
through the wicket to assure themselves their 
prisoner was safe. 

This child of eight was absolutely without 
resources. He was shut up in the dark, alone, 
without any sort of companionship or distraction. 
In this condition he lived for six months. What 
happened to him, what he did, what he thought, 
how he felt, we can never know. He was put 
away and forgotten, this little King of France, 
as some worn-out bit of furniture is flung into 
a storeroom. The hours and days went by, 
and the weeks and months, but how he passed 
them, alone in the dark, we cannot know. 

Outside, the Terror was at its height. The 
victims of the guillotine were numbered not 
by hundreds but by thousands. Famine raged ; 
France had gone mad. It is no wonder the 
child of the Temple was forgotten. 

In May, Madame Elisabeth met the doom 
which had been prepared for her long before, 
when Louis was forced to bring his accusations 
aofainst her. In November it was not believed 
she would ** outlive the week," but for some 
reason there was a delay. At last one evening 
they came to take her away from the Temple, 
where she and Madame Royale were still im- 
prisoned together. The younger Princess was 



SIX MONTHS OF SILENCE 225 

In despair, and to calm her agitation, Elisabeth 
promised to return. 

*' No, citizen," said those who had come for 
her, ''you shall not return." The next day she 
was guillotined. 

Meantime the old preoccupation continued, 
the Revolution was still brooding over the pos- 
sible escape and establishment of Louis XVII. 
This was the cause — nominally, at least — of the 
death of the infamous Hebert in the spring. 
Robespierre charged him with plotting and taking 
royalist money. Danton was executed a few 
weeks later. It was stated he had been acting 
in a conspiracy to re-establish the monarchy. 
In June, some fifty persons were guillotined for 
their alleged complicity in a similar plot. 

In this general massacre the centre and cause 
of It all was himself often in danger of the death 
that awaited his supposed partisans. Even in 
Simon's time Hebert had used to threaten the 
boy with the guillotine. This threat frightened 
the child so terribly that often he fainted when 
he heard it. It was not, though, a mere empty 
threat to frighten a child. 

*' The coalised Powers," said Billaud-Varenne, 
''should know that a single thread holds the 
sword which is suspended over the head of the 
tyrant's son. If they take another step, he will 
be the first victim of the people. It is by such 
15 



226 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

vigorous measures that we shall succeed in giving 
aplomb to our new government." That it would 
give the government aplomb, was indeed a 
strange reason for advocating the execution of 
a helpless, innocent little boy of eight. 

Yet we can only wish that Hebert and Billaud- 
Varenne had carried out their threats, for the 
guillotine was quick and its pain soon finished; 
while to even the most callous imagination the 
picture of this child — for months alone, abandoned, 
terrified, in the dark — is not one it is good to 
look upon. 

At first he seems to have taken care of him- 
self and his room, to have washed, and changed 
his linen. Presently, however, the deadening 
effect of solitude, of lack of exercise and diversion, 
of bad food and bad air — the windows of his room 
were never opened so long as he remained in 
it — robbed him of interest in the care of his 
person. The soiled linen which, when he dis- 
carded it, he had used to put through the wicket, 
was no longer returned. His guards, in con- 
sequence, stopped giving him fresh linen. 

He no longer cleaned his room, but lay helpless 
and inert in the midst of accumulations of filth. 
Vermin came in swarms, and rats and mice, and 
great black spiders such as are found in dungeons. 
*' Everything is alive in this room," said the 
servant, who, as he brought the food one day, 



SIX MONTHS OF SILENCE 227 

pressed his face against the wicket to look about 
into loathsome darkness. 

The smell from the room was so disgusting 
that no one could bear even to go near the 
door. It seems miraculous that any human being 
could have lived in such an atmosphere. But 
Louis XVII. was hardly any longer a human 
being, he was degraded, prostrated, atrophied. 

He was no longer a miserable child. He was 
merely a thing that was still alive. 



CHAPTER XIV 

DEATH 

WHILE this pitiful young creature who 
might have sat on the throne of France 
was lying in the midst of filth and vermin, his 
sister, Princesse Marie-Therese-Charlotte, was also 
in solitary confinement, though her isolation was 
not so terrible as was his. For almost fifteen 
months this young girl— not yet sixteen years 
old — was left alone. Madame Elisabeth had, 
however, foreseen something of this sort, and 
before her departure from the Temple had 
ic'i^-^ht her niece how to take care of herself. 
The result was that Madame Royale, thanks to 
her aunt's forethought and to the fact that she 
was nearly twice as old as the poor little King, 
was able to keep herself clean and well. 

In the account which Madame Royale has 
written of her captivity she speaks with disgust, 
and something very like contempt, of her brother's 
utter self-abandonment. "He should have taken 
better care of his person," says she ; as if a poor 

eight-year-old child — ill, terrified, solitary, in the 

228 



DEATH 229 

dark — could be expected to take systematic care 
of himself, to preserve that self-respect which 
would force him, when weak and despondent, 
to get up and sweep his room, to drag about 
heavy pitchers of water, and to wash himself in 
the freezing atmosphere of that damp, unheated 
cell. Many a grown person would have lacked 
the strength of will to carry out a sanitary regime 
in the face of such hopeless conditions. We 
cannot, however, expect Madame Royale, con- 
sidering the boy with the sharp, unhesitat- 
ing judgment of childhood, to make allowances 
for him. She kept herself clean ; why should 
not he ? 

Notwithstanding her intolerance, the Princess 
was in deep distress about the boy. Again and 
again she made vain demands to be allowed to 
join him and to take care of him. 

In May, when Louis's solitary confinement 
had lasted some four months and his sister's 
had just commenced, the great Robespierre paid 
a visit to the Temple. The visit was a secret 
one. The only scanty information we have about 
it is furnished by Madame Royale herself. 

" The officers showed him great respect," 
says she. ". . . He stared at me insolently, cast 
his eyes over my books, and after joining the 
municipal officers in a search, retired." It was 
said, though probably without much reason, that 



230 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Robespierre had conceived the strange project 
of marrying himself to the young Princess. 

As for Louis, it is not known whether Robes- 
pierre saw him or not. One of many rumours 
about the little King with which the Paris of the 
time was filled was to the effect that Robespierre 
had taken the child surreptitiously to Meudon 
for a day or two, and then brought him back 
again to the Temple. Like the other rumours, 
this is undoubtedly a fable. We have no reason 
to believe that Louis left his cell for a single 
minute, or had any intercourse with any one 
whatsoever until after the uprising of the 9th 
Thermidor. 

On the 27th July — or as the Revolution styled 
it, the 9th Thermidor — Robespierre was over- 
thrown. Next morning, at six o'clock, there 
was heard a great noise outside the Temple. 
People ran to and fro, the guards called to arms, 
doors banged, and drums rolled. It was the 
victorious General Barras come to visit the 
prison, to look with his own eyes at the children 
of Capet. 

For the first time in six months the door of 
the King's room was opened, and Barras, shining 
in his gold lace and gaudy costume, stood before 
the almost stupefied child. Nothing could better 
prove the deadening effect which his long aban- 
donment had had than the fact that this sudden 



DEATH 231 

visit and the appearance of the brilliantly arrayed 
general hardly moved the boy at all. 

He was lying doubled up in the cradle-bed, 
and Barras was appalled at his condition and 
surroundings. 

The general asked him why he slept in the 
cradle instead of the larger bed, which was also 
in the room. 

" I like the cradle better than the bed," 
answered the boy, raising himself from his 
stupor. ** I have no complaint to make against 
my guards." 

"As he said this," writes Barras, "he looked 
at me and at them alternately — at me, to put 
himself under my protection ; at them, in fear of 
the resentment they might show afterwards, did 
he utter any complaints to me." 

Notwithstanding the child's pathetic discretion, 
Barras was amazed and disgusted at what con- 
fronted him, and left the room, declaring that 
extensive improvements should be made at once. 

He afterwards visited Madame Royale, talked 
with her briefly and then left the Temple, after 
delivering a patriotic harangue to the guards. 

Meantime, while Barras and the boy were 
talking together in this vile room of the Temple, 
Simon had died on the scaffold. It has been 
said that his was a well-deserved fate, but we 
fancy that the knowledge of it would have grieved 



232 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

the King, whose guardian he had been ; for often 
in the dark loneliness of his cell Louis must have 
regretted the rough cobbler and the cobbler's 
wife who had combed and washed him. 

That same day, so it happened, a new guardian 
was chosen. Barras appointed him. He was a 
Creole from Martinique, Laurent by name, and 
a man of kindly and agreeable disposition. 

On the 29th July, Laurent arrived at the 
Temple, and for the next four months Louis was 
entirely under his care. He proved a far gentler 
master than the man who had just died. To 
what extent, however, he improved the child's 
condition is rather uncertain. There are several 
accounts, entirely contradictory, of how Laurent 
behaved when he took up his duties at the 
Temple. One chronicler represents him as set- 
ting to work at once to make Louis clean and 
comfortable. Another assures us that it was not 
until September that Laurent even entered the 
boy's cell, his condition till that time remain- 
ing practically what it had been before the 
9th Thermidor. 

The truth probably lies somewhere midway 
between these two accounts. Laurent, for some 
reason, did not make a great effort to carry out 
Barras' instructions with regard to the child. 
His room was cleaned, it is true, and he was 
provided with a new bed, the old one being in 



DEATH 233 

a disgusting state. He was also bathed and 
put into fresh clothes. Physically, he was more 
comfortable, but the terrible solitude continued 
as before. Three times a day Laurent paid him 
a short visit. For the rest of the time, and during 
the long black nights, he was left alone. 

Louis's old governess in the days when he 
was the petted Dauphin of Versailles and the 
Tuileries, investigated, some time afterwards, 
the events of this period. After talking the 
matter over with Madame Royale and with some 
of the Temple staff, the worthy Madame de 
Tourzel came to the conclusion that ** the lot of 
the young King was not really ameliorated until 
he passe^i out of Laurent's hands." 

Laurent's sole supervision of the prison 
ceased on November 8, when the associate for 
whom he had been clamouring almost ever since 
he came to the Temple was sent to share his 
work and his responsibilities. These responsi- 
bilities were no slight thing at a time when hardly 
a day passed without some talk in Paris of the 
possible escape of Louis XVH. 

Laurent's associate was a man named Gomin, 
of whose kindly heart nothing but good has been 
recorded, though those who knew him speak 
of him as extremely timid and afraid of com- 
promising himself 

Gomin's treatment of the little King was in 



234 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

every way admirable. When he arrived at the 
Temple he found the child in an appalling con- 
dition. He was torpid, and seemed only half 
alive ; he did not wish to speak nor to move, 
nor to interest himself in anything. All he asked 
was to be let alone. Physically, his state was 
equally pitiable. His body had grown mis- 
shapen from ill-treatment and lack of exercise. 
His back was bent, and his legs and arms were 
unnaturally long. His face, however, still retained 
something of its old beauty. 

At first it was difficult to do much for the 
child. Laurent and Gomin both feared to com- 
promise themselves by any great show of sym- 
pathy, and were forced to leave him in almost 
unbroken solitude. At nine in the morning they 
visited him and saw him have his breakfast. 
At two he dined — eating, as formerly, a coarse, 
unappetising meal, quite unsuited to an ailing 
child. In the evening he had supper, and im- 
mediately afterwards was put to bed and left by 
himself till nine the next morning. Except at 
meal-times, he was entirely alone. 

Gomin's first benefaction was to get permission 
for Louis to have a light during the long lonely 
nights, when heretofore the poor boy had often 
suffered agonies of terror in the dark. For this 
Louis was very grateful, and gradually he grew 
to trust Gomin, perhaps even to talk to him. 



DEATH 235 

The boy was, however, almost always silent, 
particularly with strangers. This was partly from 
fear, no doubt, and partly from a dull, apathetic 
amazement that any one should be taking the 
trouble to treat him kindly. 

Gomin, after a time, was able to arrange that 
he should spend now and then several hours 
at a time with the boy in efforts to rouse and 
entertain him. Evidently the good man was 
successful, for we hear of Louis's reading books 
which Gomin gave him, and of his even playing 
cards with his guardian, the latter always arrang- 
ing the game in such a way that the poor lad 
might win. He also delighted the boy by gain- 
ing permission to take him for a change into 
another room of the Temple. This small favour 
was to the long-imprisoned child something 
almost incredibly delightful, and his pleasure 
when he was taken into the council-room and 
put in a chair near the window must have been 
pitiful to witness. 

Meantime, while Louis XVIL in the Temple 
was being humanised by his guardian, Paris out- 
side was spending much time in discussing him 
and his fate. 

Not long after Laurent's arrival, it had been 
urged in the Convention that the ''offspring of 
the tyrant " should be exiled, and France thereby 
delivered from ''a constant cause of uneasiness." 



236 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

A few months later this banishment was urged 
again. 

** I demand," said one of the deputies, in 
the doubtful metaphor which often accompanies 
patriotism, '' that measures be taken to purge the 
soil of freedom from the only trace of royalty 
which remains in it." 

On the 22nd January 1795 — that is, two 
years and a day after Louis XVI.'s death — 
Cambac6res delivered a well-reasoned opinion 
as to the treatment which France should give 
to the dead King's son. Cambaceres opposed 
the banishment. 

"An enemy," said he, "is much less dangerous 
while he is in your power than after he has 
passed into the hands of those who uphold his 
cause. 

" There is little danger in keeping captive 
the individuals of the Capet family ; there is 
much in exiling them. The exiling of tyrants 
has almost always prepared the way for their 
re-establishment, and if Rome had kept the 
Tarquins in her power, she would never have 
needed to fight them." 

A discussion followed this speech, in which 
one deputy made a suggestion which was even 
then looked upon as brutal. He proposed 
another and a surer way of ridding France of 
the last of the Capets. 



DEATH 237 

And yet it is to-day difficult to understand 
why, in the midst of the murdering frenzy which 
held Paris for so long, this child so closely 
bound to the loathed cause was allowed to live. 
We cannot but share the feeling of the deputy 
who exclaimed, amidst hisses, ** Amongst so 
many useless crimes committed before the 9th 
Thermidor, I am astonished that we spared the 
relics of this impure race." 

But while the Convention was disputing what 
should be done with Louis XVII., higher forces 
had taken the matter into their own hands. His 
condition was growing day by day more alarm- 
ing. It was plain that he was seriously ill. 

He suffered from attacks of fever. He grew 
physically even more apathetic, and could not 
be kept away from the fire. His guards used 
to coax him up to the top of the tower to take 
the air, but no sooner did he reach the leads 
than he complained of being unable to walk, and 
asked to go downstairs again. The swellings 
at his joints, particularly his knees, from which 
he had suffered since the ordeal of his solitary 
imprisonment, grew worse. 

All this frightened his guards, and the autho- 
rities also when they learned of it. Imme- 
diately the Commune sent three commissioners 
to investigate matters, and to find out how 
serious the little Capet's illness really was. 



238 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

These commissioners included Harmand, who 
has left a record of the visit — a document full 
of interest, both for the account it gives of the 
prisoner's condition and also for the somewhat 
humorous light it throws on the character of 
the author. 

Harmand, publishing this account years after- 
wards, when the Bourbons had come into their 
kingdom again, assumes throughout a tone of 
deepest sympathy and veneration for the un- 
fortunate royal child, and represents himself as 
having addressed the boy in such respectful 
language as would probably have compromised 
and utterly ruined the good man had he really 
used it in 1794. The fact is, according to the 
testimony of Gomin, that Harmand said hardly 
anything at all, and that all the questions which 
he afterwards wrapped up in sugared language 
and put into his own mouth really came from 
one of the other commissioners. 

As far, therefore, as his report deals with 
his own conversational efforts it has little value, 
but we have no reason to suppose that in the 
more important matter of describing Louis's 
condition and surroundings, it is anything but 
quite truthful and worthy of our attention. 

After telling, rather melodramatically, how ** the 
horrible bolts creaked," Harmand continues with 
a description of Louis XVII., in whose presence 



DEATH 239 

he and his associates found themselves when 
the door opened : — 

" The Prince was seated in front of a little 
square table, on which were spread out a great 
number of playing cards, some of which were 
bent into the shape of boxes and chests, others 
built up into castles. He was busy with his 
cards when we entered, and did not interrupt 
his game. 

*' He was dressed in a new sailor suit of slate- 
coloured cloth. His head was uncovered. His 
room was clean and well lighted. ... I went 
towards the Prince, but our movements seemed 
to make not the slightest impression on him." 

Harmand then gives an outline of *'a little 
harangue " which he delivered to the boy. Louis 
looked at him fixedly, without changing his 
position. He listened with every appearance 
of the greatest attention, but answered not a 
word. 

Nothing discouraged, Harmand harangued 
again. 

" * I have perhaps explained myself badly, or 
it is possible that you, sir, have not heard what 
I said. But I have the honour to ask you if 
you wish for a horse, a dog, birds, playthings 
of any sort whatsoever, one or more companions 
of your own age whom we will present to you 
before installing them near you.*^ Would you 



240 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

like at this moment to go down into the garden 
or to climb up to the towers? Do you care 
for some sweets ? Some cakes ? . . . ' 

** Still the same fixed look, the same attention, 
the same silence." 

During the whole length of the visit, Louis 
never spoke. This fact indicates to some who 
do not believe that Louis XVII. died in the 
Temple, that the child Harmand saw was not 
Louis but a deaf-mute, and is indeed one of 
the important points in the countless discussions 
which have since taken place about the mystery 
of the Temple. 

Before going away, Harmand assures us that 
the commissioners gave orders that ''the exe- 
crable state of things," such as bad food, should 
be changed in the future. Nothing, however, 
was altered, and there was not even a doctor 
sent to attend the sick child. 

At the end of March, Laurent, at his own 
request, was relieved from his duties at the 
Temple, and two days later a new guardian 
came to supply his place. The new-comer was 
Lasne, to whom in future the care of the child 
prisoner was entrusted, Gomin restricting his 
attention more particularly to Madame Royale. 

Lasne, like the two men he succeeded, was a 
person of much gentleness and amiability. He 
treated the boy with every consideration. Says 




This picture, once a faz 



THACKERAY S MYSTERIOUS PORTRAIT 



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DEATH 241 

Madame de Tourzel, who knew him at a later 
period, *' Lasne was a frank soldier and a man 
without ambition." Besides being a soldier — 
he had been a member of the National Guard 
and had been wounded while defending the 
Queen's apartments on the 20th June — Lasne 
had also worked as a house-painter. 

It was while soldiering that Lasne had seen 
Louis several years before, when the happy 
little Dauphin used to play in his miniature 
garden on the banks of the Seine. Later on 
— according to the story subsequently told by 
Lasne, which is implicitly believed by those 
who hold that the Dauphin died in the Temple 
— he and the King became firm friends, and 
Louis, when he became accustomed to his new 
friend's martial appearance, gave him more of 
his confidence than he had given to any one 
else since he left Marie-Antoinette's side. The 
soldier and his prisoner used to exchange 
many reminiscences about those fine days. It 
made the boy particularly happy to listen to 
recollections of his old regiment, the Royal- 
Dauphin. 

'* Its manoeuvres used to be splendid," said 
Lasne. 

The boy's face broke out into a delighted 

smile. ** Did you see me with my sword .'^" 

he asked ; and there is no doubt that these 
16 



242 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

moments of reminiscence were the happiest Louis 
had known for almost two years. 

Under Lasne's charge, the boy was left much 
less often in solitude. Only at night was he 
left for long alone. During the day Lasne 
spent much time in his room, or else took the 
child up to the top of the tower to be in the 
air. Louis, already very feeble and somewhat 
lame, walked only with difficulty and leaning 
against Lasne's arm. 

As the spring of 1795 advanced, Louis 
XVI I. 's condition grew steadily and rapidly 
worse. Lasne and Gomin became more and 
more alarmed, as is shown by the successive 
reports which they prepared on the subject day 
by day. 

" The little Capet is indisposed " — so reads the 
first. 

Then : " The little Capet is dangerously ill." 

And finally, on the third day : '' We fear for 
his life." 

Till now no doctor had attended the child, 
but on May 6, when this third report was 
received, the authorities sent to the Temple, 
Desault, a physician of considerable prominence. 

Desault was greatly alarmed at the King's 
state. It was plain that he regarded the case 
as almost hopeless. He prescribed, nevertheless, 
some medicine to be taken every half-hour, and 



DEATH 243 

an external application to the swellings at the 
boy's joints. 

To this first treatment the boy objected bitterly. 
Whether it was from fear of poisoning or from a 
dislike of the physic, or from a natural youthful 
antipathy to doses, Louis obstinately refused to 
take his medicine. Finally, however, after many 
scenes and after the good-hearted Lasne had 
tasted it before him, Louis yielded, and there- 
after followed Desault's bidding very tractably. 

The child's strength grew less every day. 
He did not suffer much, but sank under an ill- 
ness which he had no force to combat. He 
had very little pain. 

Desault was quite hopeless, and yet, serious 
as was his patient's condition, he was destined 
to outlive the doctor. 

At the end of May he visited the boy for 
the last time. As he left the Temple one of 
the commissioners said to him, ** He is as good 
as dead, is he not?" 

The doctor nodded and said he feared so. 
On the ist June, Desault himself was dead. 
At the time, as well as later, his sudden death 
aroused much suspicion, and it was said he had 
for some reason been poisoned. However this 
may have been, we come here again to another 
incident of some importance in considering the 
Temple mystery. 



244 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

For six days, on account of Desault's death, 
Louis was left quite without medical care. On 
June 5 a successor to the dead physician was 
appointed, somewhat tardily, in the shape of 
Palletan, and that same day he came to the 
Temple. 

No sooner did this new doctor see what con- 
dition the boy was in, than he demanded that 
some one else should immediately be sent to 
help him to take care of the child. While he 
was talking in the sick-room and giving direc- 
tions for Louis's treatment, the boy beckoned 
him to the side of his bed. 

** Do not talk so loud," he said. *' I am afraid 
my sister will hear you, and I should be sorry 
to have her know I was ill. It would trouble 
her very much." 

Palletan took it upon himself to have the 
patient moved into another room whose windows 
looked out on to the garden, and where the June 
sun shining in gave the boy much pleasure. 

Two days later Dumangin, the consulting 
physician for whom Palletan had asked, came 
to the Temple, and like the two other doctors, 
regarded Louis's illness as very alarming. Both 
he and Palletan despatched to the authorities a 
pressing demand that a sick-nurse should be 
sent to take care of the King, for the iron rules 
of the prison still forced the guards to leave 



DEATH 245 

this dying child quite alone all night, from 
nine in the evening until eight in the morning. 
After the usual delay, this demand was granted 
on the 8th June. But it was then too late. 

On June 7 the child fainted when the lotion 
was rubbed on the swellings on his knees and 
wrists, and for a moment Lasne feared he would 
never regain consciousness. 

In the evening, however, he seemed better. 
His eyes brightened, his voice grew stronger. 
But his mind wandered, and when they brought 
him his supper at eight o'clock, he spoke in- 
coherently of his mother. 

That night, as always, he was left alone. 

Next morning, the 8th June 1795, Palletan 
visited him early, and Dumangin came at eleven 
o'clock. They found the child very feeble. He 
had hallucinations and fancied he heard music. 

** Amongst all the voices I recognise my 
mother's," said he. 

His breath came slowly, his eyes wandered. 
The end seemed very close. 

Gomin, in alarm, hurried to the Convention 
to report his desperate condition. While he 
was gone the child died, his head resting 
against Lasne's shoulder, and in his ears the 
dream-music. 



CHAPTER XV 

BUT DID HE DIE? 

npHE conventional phrase, '' Le roi est mort : 
^ vive le roi !'' was true in a new sense in the 
case of the child of the Temple. It is more 
than a hundred years since the death of Louis 
XVII. was announced. During the century men 
have died and others have given up their lives 
and their fortunes in vain effort to find out what 
happened to this young king, to learn whether 
he died on the 8th June 1795, or whether he 
escaped and lived — perhaps even a sadder crea- 
ture than the prisoner of the Temple — a cheated, 
nameless martyr. Louis XVII., alive, was never 
half so vital a personage as Louis XVII. after — 
officially — he was dead. Never did an existence 
so short give cause for so many conjectures and 
theories, so many quarrels and discussions and 
impostures. 

Barely was the boy in the Temple dead when 
it was rumoured about Europe that he had been 
poisoned by his guards. Poison — so it was said 
— had been given to him "in a dish of spinach." 

Only seven days after the death, there appeared 

246 



BUT DID HE DIE? 247 

a pamphlet, called Question impgrtante sur la 
Mori de Louis XVII., which was the first con- 
tribution to this now tremendous library about 
the Louis XVII. mystery, and in which these 
suspicions were definitely advanced. All this 
talk, though quite unfounded, aroused, as might 
be supposed, a great sensation. 

Soon, however, the rumour changed. There 
was no longer much talk of poisoning. It was 
whispered that Louis had escaped, that the 
child who died was not the King, but merely 
some poor moribund creature stolen from the 
hospitals. Here was a sensation indeed ! 

"What had happened to the little King? 
Had he escaped? Where was he now?" — It 
was the favourite topic of the clubs and the 
tea-tables, the mystery of the hour. 

In the European Magazine for December 1799 
is a little article that shows how England felt 
towards this royal scandal, an article that, with 
its old-fashioned phrasing, its multitude of capi- 
tals and long-tailed D's, its yellow leaves and 
its bad grammar, carries us back more surely 
than do all the painstaking historians to the 
times of the Dauphin and to the days when 
his mysterious fate was one of the living interests 
of the moment. What the old magazine says is 
here quoted almost as it stands : — 

'* A most extraordinary rumour which has 



248 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

been stated in a Morning Print, has occupied 
the public conversation. We give the article 
without pretending to any knowledge, or offering 
an opinion on the subject. 

'' Private letters, which have been received 
by various persons of the first consideration 
amongst the French Emigrants, Nobility and 
others, agree in the general statement of an un- 
accountable rumour. It is generally reported, say 
their letters, that the unfortunate Louis XVII., 
supposed to have expired in the Temple upon 
the 9th of June 1795, is still alive. The 
Triumvir Sieyes is assigned both as the author 
of the report and the evidence of the fact. It 
was he who is said to have subtracted the 
devoted Prince from the prison of the National 
Convention. He procured a child of a corre- 
sponding age from the hospital of the Hotel 
Dieu, incurably afflicted with the Scrofula, 
the pretended disease of the young King, 
and admitted this unfortunate child into the 
Temple, and exposed the body disfigured with 
ulcers and operations instead of the Royal 
victim. 

'' According to this relation, Louis XVII. exists 

WHERE he exists can only be known to those 

who of all mankind are alone acquainted with 
the fact of his existence ; and when and how 
he shall appear depends upon the makers of 



BUT DID HE DIE? 249 

this important secret. It is easy to apprehend 
the utility which the arch-villain Sieyes may pro- 
mise himself to reap from this story, if it were to 
find credit ; and the power he may have already 
derived, and be able to exert, and the ascend- 
ancy he may have attained, from the secret card 
he has so long held unplayed in the game of 
Revolutions. 

*' It is to be remembered that a few days 
previous to the King's death, or at least the 
exposition of the body in the Temple, the famous 
Surgeon Desault expired suddenly. Whoever 
looks back at the public discussions of that period 
in France will observe the stress laid upon this 
COINCIDENCE. It was then inferred he would 
not suffer his patient to be poisoned. But it 
was also rumoured, on no mean authority, that 
he denied this patient to be the Royal infant 
it was pretended he was. Moreover, it is to 
be remembered that this unhappy child, the 
prisoner of his assassins in the Temple, the 
bulletin, or daily account, of whose declining 
health was regularly published to the world, 
perished in June 1795 i" his dungeon, of a 
scrofulous disease, according to the facts sub- 
mitted to the then Usurpers of France and 
published by their authority. It is to be re- 
membered that all Europe, with one common 
cry, burst forth in the denial that this interesting 



250 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

child had a scrofulous disease. Neither the House 
of Bourbon, nor that of Austria, were afflicted with 
that malady ; the babe could not have contracted 
it. When this bulletin arrived in England, with 
the concomitant report that the young sufferer 
had been poisoned by the Committee of Safety, 
some very extraordinary circumstances occurred 
or transpired. 

'' All the world believed the young King to 
have been murdered. The British Cabinet, with 
no other opinion, ordered the bulletin to be 
examined by a physician of the very first repu- 
tation. This gentleman reported to the King's 
Council that the young King could not have 
died of the cause assigned in the bulletin. The 
case was fictitious, and the consequence would 
not have followed from the premises, even if 
they had been true." 

Here, then, are set forth two suspicious 
circumstances in connection with the child's 
death. 

Desault, sent to prescribe for him, died 
himself before his patient — died by so sudden 
and strange an illness that many people, includ- 
ing his widow, believed he had been poisoned 
because, as a man of upright character, he 
refused to lend himself to some irregular practice 
at the Temple. To this suspicion, however, 
may be raised the objection that if those in 



BUT DID HE DIE? 251 

authority had wished to keep secret the fact 
that the imprisoned invalid was not the Dauphin, 
they would naturally have chosen a doctor who 
did not know the Prince rather than one who, 
like Desault, knew him well. 

But the other circumstance, that of the 
disease from which the child was said to have 
died, is more seriously suspicious. In the report 
of the autopsy held the day after the death, the 
doctors stated officially that the body, "which 
the commissioners told us was that of the 
defunct Louis Capet's son," had met its death 
from *'a scrofulous affection of long standing." 
This official report has been the cause of 
many disputes. 

In the first place, the ambiguity with which 
it was worded, and by which the doctors 
disclaimed all responsibility in pronouncing on 
the identity of the corpse, seems a striking 
circumstance in a case where the identity of 
the body was so important. Even though this 
ambiguity was, as M. Chantelauze says, the 
customary formula in such cases, it seems 
extraordinary that the doctors, in dealing with 
so important a case, should deliberately have 
laid themselves open to suspicion. A more 
important point is that the illness imputed to 
the Dauphin is said to have been one from 
which, under the circumstances, he could not 



252 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

have died. The child of the Temple died 
from an hereditary malady which it is argued 
the son of Louis and Marie- Antoinette could 
not have inherited. Such was the opinion of 
the nameless physician quoted in the European 
Magazine ; such, stated most definitely only a 
few years ago, was the opinion of Dr. Cabanes. 
Here then we have a suspicious fact undoubtedly 
worth considering. There are many others. 

Some of the other irregularities are so insig- 
nificant that, considered singly, they would be 
of little importance ; but it must be remembered 
that each of them bears upon a case already 
suspicious. Taken altogether, it must be ad- 
mitted that the circumstances of the case are 
such as to shake violently our faith in the 
conventional story of the Dauphin's death. In 
considering a few of the more striking of these 
irregularities, we are met in the first place by 
the fact that the official report of the child's 
death was not drawn up for four days after 
his death, though the regulations of the period 
demanded this formality should be carried out 
at once. How is this to be accounted for ? 
Why was it signed by Lasne, the last guardian 
to take charge of the Dauphin, rather than by 
Gomin ? And why — this is indeed striking — 
did not Madame Royale have a chance to bear 
witness to her brother's death, when she, a 



BUT DID HE DIE? 253 

prisoner under the same roof, could have killed 
all these suspicions before they were born by 
a glance at the little corpse and a stroke of 
the pen ? It would seem almost as if an effort 
had been made to render this report of the 
death as unconvincing as possible. 

About the child's burial there is also much 
that is uncertain. At least four places are 
mentioned as having been his grave, and it 
has never been ascertained beyond possibility 
of doubt what was the exact spot where the 
Dauphin, or pseudo-Dauphin, was laid. A still 
further peculiar circumstance, and one which will 
be spoken of later, was the strange behaviour 
of Madame Roy ale and the rest of the royal 
family, who by their indifference to supposed 
relics of the child, and in other ways, suggested 
that they themselves did not believe Louis XVII. 
had died in the Temple. 

The fact remains that there are in connection 
with the official ending of Louis XVII.'s career 
a dozen suspicious details, no one of which is 
of prime importance, but all of which considered 
together cannot but raise a serious doubt that 
the King died in the Temple, particularly in 
view of the weighty reasons why his escape 
might have been desired not only by royalists 
but by some of the republicans as well. To 
oppose to the suspicion that the King escaped 



254 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

and another child died in his place and under 
his name, we have only the extremely circum- 
stantial accounts furnished by Gomin and Lasne 
of the child's last days in the Temple — accounts 
which, if they be true, prove conclusively the 
dying boy was indeed Louis XVII. Gomin 
and Lasne, however, did not leave their reputa- 
tions as witnesses entirely spotless. 

Lasne, for example, during an official exami- 
nation in 1834, stated that he had talked with 
the prisoner "every day," and ''never except 
on serious and grave subjects." Only three 
years later he stated, again officially, that the 
child " never broke silence " except on one 
single occasion. " This," said Lasne, " was 
the only remark I ever heard him make in 
all the time I spent at his side." Gomin is 
but little more reliable, and it is because of 
these inconsistencies and contradictions that we 
cannot receive unquestioningly the testimony of 
these men as to Louis XVII.'s death. 

What were the reasons that made the Dauphin's 
escape desirable ? In the first place, it was 
wished for, of course, by those ardent friends 
of Marie- Antoinette who, when the Queen died, 
turned their energies and their fortunes toward 
saving her son. Amongst this number stands 
out particularly the devoted Mrs. Atkyns, a 
former actress, whose quixotic attachment to the 



BUT DID HE DIE? 255 

Queen cost her many years of her life and 
some eighty thousand pounds of money. Her 
fruitless attempts to rescue the Dauphin have 
been ably described by M. Frederic Barbey/ 
Such an ambition as hers was quite straight- 
forward and easy to understand ; she loved 
Marie-Antoinette and Marie- Antoinette's son ; 
she wished to save the royal child from a 
painful and dangerous imprisonment. There 
clusters, however, about the Dauphin's possible 
escape a growth of intrigue far more complex 
and scandalous than could concern this generous 
woman's attempt to liberate an unhappy prince. 
This intrigue has been traced by M. Henri 
Provins in many interesting books. 

On the official announcement of Louis XVH.'s 
death the Comte de Provence, though still an 
dmigrd, promptly proclaimed himself King of 
France. Even to the least cynical, it would 
be impossible to believe that this scheming, 
clever, and unscrupulous man was not delighted 

^ A tablet has lately been erected in Ketteringham to com- 
memorate the bravery of this devoted woman. The inscription 
reads : " In memory of Charlotte, daughter of Robert Walpole 
and wife of Edward Atkyns, Esq., of Ketteringham. She was 
born 1758 and died at Paris 1836, where she lies in an unknown 
grave. This tablet was erected in 1907 by a few who sympathised 
with her wish to rest in this church. She was the friend of 
Marie-Antoinette, and made several brave attempts to rescue 
her from prison, and after that Queen's death strove to save the 
Dauphin of France." 



256 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

at an opportunity to lift the crown off the head 
of his little nephew, even at the expense of the 
boy's life. The Comte de Provence — or rather 
Louis XVIII. — had always plotted against his 
elder brother and his elder brother's family. 
He was jealous of Louis XVI., he disliked 
Marie-Antoinette, and for the Dauphin, but for 
whom he would have been heir to the throne 
of France, he had a passionate hatred. 

Add to this jealousy and hatred the manoeuvres 
of a self-seeking man and the soft-heartedness 
of a charming woman, and there are ready 
materials for a romantic intrigue of the first 
water. The self-seeker was General Barras, 
the woman his supposed mistress, Josephine de 
Beauharnais, afterwards Napoleon's Empress. 
Josephine was sorry for the poor little imprisoned 
Prince and influenced Barras in his favour. 
Something else influenced Barras far more. 
Suppose — so thought the General — the Dauphin 
should be allowed to escape, while, by a secret 
substitution, a moribund child took his place 
and finally died under the name of Louis XVII. 
Would Barras not then have orained a claim 
which would be of immeasurable value to him 
in the not unlikely event of a Bourbon restora- 
tion ? The Comte de Provence, there is no 
doubt, would lend himself to the fraud of killing 
his nephew officially while really keeping him 



BUT DID HE DIE? 257 

alive. Barras, on the other hand, would hold 
the new king, Louis XVI II., in the hollow of 
his hand, would be able to dangle threateningly 
over the royal head his little cheated nephew, 
to whisper in the royal ear, ''Your throne is 
not your own, and I know where is the boy 
from whom you have stolen it " — to make himself, 
in short, the master of the King of France. It 
was certainly an alluring prospect, and if Barras 
— unforeseeing of the great Napoleon who would 
upset his pretty scheme — viewed it with approval, 
who can wonder ? 

Poor little Louis XVII. was a superfluity. 
He was more than that — this Prince on whose 
baby words courtiers had used to hang en- 
tranced but three years ago. He was a positive 
inconvenience. Not only would the Comte de 
Provence have been glad to have him removed. 
Even the royalist party, to a large extent, would 
have been relieved to be rid of him. This little 
helpless King, a prisoner in the hands of their 
enemies, a creature who could not be their leader 
for many years, perhaps never could — for they 
were told he had been almost dehumanised by 
ill-treatment — was only an embarrassing figure- 
head for their cause. The Comte de Provence, 
on the contrary, was adult and clever. It is 
no wonder that the greater part of the royalists 
preferred him to their pitiful little King. 
17 



258 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

There are therefore many indications that the 
Dauphin's escape or suppression was desired. 
There are as many stories of how the escape 
or suppression was brought about. What really 
happened inside the Temple during the two 
years that followed the Dauphin's removal from 
his mother no one can say. We have on the 
one hand the story told by conventional history 
— Simon, the six months' solitary confinement, 
the death of the little Prince on June 8, 1795. 
On the other hand, there are a score of different 
stories recounting how the boy was saved from 
the Temple and another child introduced into 
his prison to die in his name. Where the truth 
lies none can know. We can only balance 
possibilities and then say, '' This, or that, seems 
most likely." 

The many stories of the escape fall under 
two main heads, that told by Naundorff, the 
most plausible of all those who afterwards called 
themselves Louis XVII., and that told by his 
most important rival, the Baron de Richemont. 
Naundorff's story is the more complicated, and 
if a pure fabrication, does great credit to the 
ingenuity of its inventor. To tell it we must 
return to that period when the Dauphin, released 
from his solitary confinement, found himself, after 
the 9th Thermidor, again amongst human beings. 
Barras was victorious ; soft-hearted Josephine, 



BUT DID HE DIE? 259 

so we are told, pleaded for the unhappy child. 
The Comte de Provence would be glad to have 
his troublesome little nephew removed. Barras 
saw a chance to gain much — Josephine's favour, 
Louis XVI 1 1. 's gratitude, an increase of his 
own self-esteem that he had saved the boy 
from misery, probably from death — and to lose 
nothing, providing, of course, he acted dis- 
creetly. 

So the Dauphin, helpless piece in this game 
of king and general and embryonic empress, 
was rescued. This is how it was brought about 
— I tell it in almost the same words Naundorff 
himself used : It was about a year before the 
death of the supposed Louis XVII. The boy's 
friends decided — since it seemed impossible to 
get him away from the tower — to conceal him 
in it and to make his persecutors believe he 
had escaped. 

One day these friends — '* my protectors " Naun- 
dorff calls them, meaning, no doubt, some men 
from the personnel of the Temple guards — gave 
him a dose of opium, under the influence of 
which he soon fell half asleep. In this state he 
saw a child, a little boy that had been smuggled 
into the Temple inside a basket, placed in his 
bed. He, the Dauphin, was meantime put into 
the basket. As if in a dream, he noticed that 
this second child was merely a wooden figure 



260 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

with a face made to resemble his Own. Then 
he fell asleep. 

When he awoke he found himself in a large 
room, which was strange to him. It was the 
fourth storey of the Temple tower. It was a 
sort of lumber-room, and was crowded with old 
furniture, which had been shoved aside to leave 
a space for him. It communicated with a closet 
in the turret, where his food was placed. All 
other approach was barricaded, and those who 
visited him had to come crawling on all fours. 
Before he was drugged he had been told he must 
bear **all imaginable sufferings without com- 
plaining," for a single imprudence would bring 
destruction not only to him but to his bene- 
factors as well. The boy obeyed. No doubt 
it was natural to him to bear privations calmly. 
He was well used to them, poor lad. 

His friends, meantime, the better to deceive 
the government, sent out from Paris a child who 
was to travel towards Strasbourg as one trying 
to escape, and thus to give the idea that he was 
the rescued Dauphin — a manoeuvre which was 
repeated about a year later with great success. 
The government on their part, to conceal the 
loss of that child, also practised a deception. 
They replaced the wooden doll by a boy of the 
Dauphin's age, who, being deaf and dumb, could 
not betray the fraud.^ Thus while the Dauphin 



BUT DID HE DIE? 261 

was really in the garret, and while his friends were 
pretending he was on his way to Strasbourg, the 
government was pretending he was still in his 
cell as usual. It was a complex situation, and 
still greater complications were soon to follow. 

Orders were given that none who had pre- 
viously known the Dauphin should be admitted 
to the imprisoned mute. Notwithstanding, sus- 
picion gradually got about that thq real Dauphin 
was no longer there. The government was 
alarmed. It was decided the mock Dauphin 
must die. Harmful matters were mixed with his 
food to make him ill, and in order to avert the 
just suspicion that he was being poisoned, Desault 
was called in, not to cure him, but to counterfeit 
humanity. Desault soon perceived that some 
sort of poison had been given him, and evidently 
declined to associate himself with the crime. 
The would-be murderers saw themselves foiled, 
and were forced to abandon the idea of poison- 
ing the mute. A second substitution was made. 
A rickety child from one of the hospitals of Paris 
was introduced to play Dauphin. The mute was 
hidden away in another part of the Temple. 
Desault, meantime, they poisoned to prevent his 
betrayal of them. 

On the 8th June the child from the hospital 
obligingly died, and after the formalities of a 
post-mortem examination, his body was put in 



262 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

a coffin to await burial. The moment had come 
for still another substitution. This time it was 
the turn of the real Dauphin, who had all these 
months lain concealed in his lumber-room. His 
friends came to him and drugged him with a 
second dose of opium. All unconscious, he was 
placed secretly in the coffin. The dead boy was 
carried off to the garret. Then, in his gruesome 
hiding-place, the real Dauphin was taken away 
from the Temple. On the way to the burial- 
ground, the Prince still sleeping, he was (removed 
from the coffin and was hidden in the bottom of 
the carriage. The coffin was filled with rubbish 
to give it weight and was buried. The Dauphin, 
safe in the hands of his friends, was free. 

Such was Naundorff's account of how the 
Dauphin escaped. Many have believed it, though 
merely to understand it in all its intricacies of 
substituted children and mock-Dauphins requires 
a head far clearer than the ordinary. 

Richemont's story of the escape, which in its 
main lines resembles those of most of the other 
self-styled Louis XVI I. s, is far simpler. It 
will be remembered that in the days of the 
Restoration, when Louis XVIII. was King, la 
Simon, a patient at the Hospital for Incurables, 
declared repeatedly that her *' little darling was 
not dead," but that, thanks to her help, he had 
escaped and might one day come into his own 



BUT DID HE DIE? 263 

again. Her words created at the time a great 
sensation. Curious folk in high positions visited 
her at her hospital. She was taken before the 
police to be questioned, and finally, in 1819, she 
died, still affirming her story of the Dauphin's 
escape. It seems likely that, whatever may have 
been the facts, this old woman believed she was 
telling the truth. 

How did la Simon manage to save her ''little 
darling " ? The old woman herself was not in- 
clined to give details on this point. This, how- 
ever, if her story is to be accepted, appears to 
have been what happened. It was the 19th 
January 1794; the Simons — for some reason 
never fully made clear — were about to leave their 
profitable position at the Temple. At this 
moment a deaf-mute of the Dauphin's age was 
introduced surreptitiously into his prison. The 
Dauphin, hidden in a package of linen or in some 
other fashion, was smuggled away. To this 
escape the Simons, won over by a bribe, lent 
their aid. Before their departure the guards who 
succeeded them received, all unsuspecting, the 
mute mock-Dauphin from their hands, and gave in 
return an official receipt. Picture the chagrin, 
the terror of these unfortunate dupes, when a 
little later they realised how they had been 
cheated, and that instead of precious Louis XVII. 
they held prisoner a wretched deaf and dumb 



264 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

boy. Did they confess how they had been 
fooled, there is no doubt they would, in those 
merciless times, pay for their folly with their 
heads ; yet how could they hope to keep their 
mistake secret? There was only one way, and 
that was to hide the damning evidence of their 
gullibility. That day the child-prisoner was 
walled up alive in his cell, and thenceforth no 
one saw him or talked with him until the 9th 
Thermidor, six months later. 

This story has two points of strength. It 
suggests, in the first place, a reason why the 
Simons might have desired to leave so excel- 
lently paid a post as that they enjoyed at the 
Temple. It also, and this is more important, ex- 
plains the horrid brutality that condemned, with 
apparently causeless cruelty, an eight-year-old 
child to months of silence and absolute neglect. 
For these reasons, judged simply on its merits, 
the tale of la Simon gives a more convincing 
account of the escape than that given by Naun- 
dorff, which, with its series of substituted mock- 
Dauphins and its real Dauphin spending nearly a 
year alone in a lumber-room, makes rather large 
demands on our credulity. 

It is not impossible, however, that both stories, 
Richemont's and Naundorff's, were told in good 
faith. It may be that the Dauphin really escaped 
with the help of la Simon, and that, a year later; 



BUT DID HE DIE? 265 

other friends, ignorant of his rescue (for it is 
not to be supposed his saviours would have 
advertised their success), set themselves to save 
this pseudo-prince whom they supposed to be 
their actual king, and cheated, just as the guards 
had been, by the deaf-mute's resemblance to 
Louis XVII., carried off the child to the garret 
and substituted for him another boy. In this 
case we come to a state of affairs that suggests 
the imbroglios of musical comedy, and with 
the real Dauphin in freedom with his friends 
we behold three mock- Dauphins in the Temple. 
There is, in the first place, the child whom 
the Simons left to fill Louis XVI I. 's place, and 
who was subsequently hidden in the lumber- 
room by those friends who thought they saw 
in him the rightful King of France. Then there 
is the second mute introduced by the government" 
to mask the loss of the first, and later removed 
to a hiding-place in favour of the dying child 
from the hospital. Finally, we have as a third 
pseudo- Dauphin under one roof this moribund 
boy who, on June 8, 1795, died under the name 
of Louis XVII. Though absurd enough, all 
this is not absolutely impossible. 

We have not, however, exhausted the possible 
methods which may have been employed to bring 
about the Dauphin's departure from the Temple. 
We have been told how he was carried out in 



266 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

a coffin, and how he left his prison in a basket of 
linen or a hollow toy horse. We have yet to 
hear how he left it in Simon's arms, a corpse. 
This last theory has lately been advanced by 
M. Joseph Turquan, who believes that in Jan- 
uary 1794, when the Simons left the Temple, 
the cobbler at the instigation of his superiors 
murdered the Dauphin by strangling him, and 
buried his body in quicklime in the ditch about 
the Temple. Some years later the skeleton of 
a child was dug up in the ditch, and on this 
rather small foundation M. Turquan has built 
up his grim theory. Though ingenious, it is 
for several reasons not convincing, the principal 
objection to it being the subsequent behaviour 
of la Simon. 

This woman could not have failed to know 
it if her husband had murdered the Dauphin. 
Conditions of life at the Temple were not such 
that the cobbler could have kept his vile secret. 
Supposing, then, that la Simon knew of the 
murder, was after a fashion an accomplice, does 
it seem likely that she would have been foolish 
enough deliberately to attract attention to her 
guilty self years after, when the family of the 
murdered child occupied the throne and she 
was a helpless widow, a charity patient in a 
hospital? Is it not preposterous to suppose that 
she would gratuitously have provoked an investi- 



BUT DID HE DIE? 267 

gation which must have proved fatal to her? 
**My little darling is not dead!" — these could 
never have been the words of a murderess. 

Whatever may have happened to the Dauphin 
during those two years of mystery, it is certain, 
at any rate, that he was not strangled by Simon. 
Unfortunately, it is not so easy to say what did 
happen to the child. Never before nor since 
has any one question had so many answers. 
Yet if it is difficult to determine amongst such 
a mass of fiction and possible truth how the 
Dauphin did escape, if he escaped at all, it is 
many times harder to find out what happened 
to him afterwards. 

During the years that followed 1795 some 
forty persons, some impostors, some lunatics, 
and some few genuinely convinced of their rights, 
either pretended to be the Dauphin or possessed 
friends who made these pretensions for them. 
The careers of this extraordinary body of men 
have furnished for more than a century figure- 
heads to the fanatical, romance for the story-teller, 
and a very pleasant subject of consideration to 
the cynic. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE FORTY DAUPHINS 

NEVER has a prince disappeared in romantic 
circumstances but there have sprung up 
like mushrooms in the night a crowd of im- 
postors, a mass of legends. Historic scandal 
has put many faces behind the Iron Mask and 
exercised an equal inventiveness in a hundred 
less famous instances. The case of the Dauphin, 
however, is unique in the appeal it has made to 
the ingenuity of adventurers. Forty men have 
called themselves Louis XVII. There was 
hardly a province in France that had not its 
particular false-Dauphin. America had two or 
three. There was one in England who dis- 
cussed his pretensions publicly with the Times. 
In short, in the years of the Bourbon restoration 
and of Louis- Philippe, one might scarce walk 
abroad without jostling some man who called 
himself Louis XVII. 

One reason may be found to explain this 
absurd little army, a reason which will, in some 

cases, excuse from the charge of wilful deceit 

268 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 269 

those who formed part of it. It must be re- 
membered that France after the Revolution 
was a country turned upside down. The home- 
less and the fatherless were everywhere, and the 
land was full of lost children, many of them of 
noble rank, who grew up often without name 
or definite recollection of who they were. What 
more natural than that some of these poor waifs, 
remembering vaguely the days when they were 
petted noble children, should, as they grew 
older, fancy themselves to be the lost king, and 
should, by brooding over their fancy, come 
at last to the unalterable belief that it was 
true ? 

A circumstance which to the unreflecting was 
particularly astonishing was the incontestable 
resemblance which many of these self-styled 
Dauphins bore to the royal house, indeed some 
of them based their entire pretensions on this 
bald fact. Yet the resemblance was natural 
enough when we recall the scandalous private 
lives of Louis XIV. and his successor. France 
held many men of all ranks who, though they 
had no right to the Bourbon name, came very 
fairly by the Bourbon nose. The sins of the 
fathers were visited on the children, and the 
grandsons of Louis XV. and his mistresses grew 
up to claim the crown of the grandson of 
Louis XV. and his wife. The wicked old king 



270 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

who bequeathed to France the Reign of Terror 
was also responsible for a good share of the 
forty pretenders who demanded to wear the 
crown. 

The first of these mock- Dauphins, curiously 
enough, was a pretender despite himself, and 
also — another strange circumstance — he com- 
menced his career as a pseudo- Louis XVII. even 
before the real, or rather the official, Louis XVII. 
died. 

It will be remembered that in one of the 
stories of the escape from the Temple there 
was mention of how a child was sent out of 
Paris to be driven away with ostentatious speed 
and secrecy, so as to lay a false scent and to 
divert attention from the escape of the real 
Prince. As was expected and hoped, this 
child was indeed mistaken for the Dauphin, 
only the mistake was somewhat more serious 
than had been intended. The child was Morin 
de Gueriviere, and according to his own story 
he was, on June 7, 1795 (the day before the 
death in the Temple), put into a carriage and 
driven away from Paris by an agent of the 
Prince de Conde, who all along the road 
behaved in such a fashion as to attract as 
much attention as possible. Quantities of people 
were deceived and took Morin for the escaping 
King. In fact, he was even arrested. Much 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 271 

credit is due to him that in after years he did 
not attempt to play again the royal role he had 
carried off so successfully in childhood. 

It is unnecessary to attempt to give an account 
of each of the two-score self-styled Dauphins 
who, through a period of eighty years, claimed 
for themselves the name of Louis XVII. Many 
of these men contented themselves with model- 
ling their procedure and the stories they told 
directly on the procedure and stories of some 
other pretender, so that they never emerged 
from the obscurity of their own little band of 
followers, and indeed never deserved to. It 
is with the more prominent and ingenious of 
the soi-disant Dauphins that we must concern 
ourselves, with such men as Hervegault and 
Mathurin Bruneau, with Richemont and Naun- 
dorff and the Iroquois chief, those brighter stars 
in the strange constellation that called itself 
Louis XVII. 

Jean-Marie Hervegault was the first to attract 
real notice. The son of a tailor of Saint-L6, 
Hervegault was handsome, attractive, imagina- 
tive, and gifted with ambitions that soared high 
above the parental thimble. In the autumn of 
1796 he left his home to seek adventures, and 
before very long had embarked on them in 
a characteristic fashion by pretending to be a 
youth of lofty rank. His method was to travel 



272 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

about the country under different pseudonyms 
and disguises, sometimes indeed dressed as a 
girl. His pseudonyms he shifted with amazing 
rapidity. At one time he called himself a scion 
of a noble Belgian house, at another he pretended 
to be the son of the Prince of Monaco. Finally, 
his ideas growing gradually more and more lofty, 
he claimed to be the son of Louis XVI. and 
Marie- Antoinette. He rapidly made converts, 
who, looking at the beautiful face of the tailor's 
son and admiring his distinguished manners, 
exclaimed, '* It is only necessary to look at him 
to see who he is ! " 

Presently Hervegault met with a set-back and 
was imprisoned in Normandy for two years. 
Emerging, he found his dupes clustering about 
him, their "martyred Prince," with a fine enthu- 
siasm and in great numbers. They treated him 
with the highest respect and honour, and formed 
for him a sort of little court, with favourites and 
courtesans. Every dupe saw in himself a future 
minister of France or a duchess in embryo, and 
Hervegault, recently graduated from needle and 
beeswax, was lapped in luxury and wrapped in 
flattery and soft words. It was to this miniature 
court of his that Hervegault told one day the 
story of his supposed escape from the Temple 
and of his subsequent career. From this story 
it may plainly be seen that he was not only 



THE FOETY DAUPHINS 273 

an impostor, but an ignorant one as well. The 
first part of his autobiography was made up 
almost point by point from a popular novel 
by Regnault-Warin called Le Cimetiere de la 
Madeleine^ in which the author had recounted 
how the Dauphin escaped from prison and what 
became of him. 

Hervegault's faithful court, however, were quite 
convinced by his account of how he had escaped 
from prison in a basket of linen, and had been 
carried off by the royalists to La Vendee, and 
of how the son of the tailor Hervegault had 
been purchased for 200,000 livres to take his 
place at the Temple. Leaving La Vendue, 
said he, he had visited England, and had been 
received by the King, who had given him an 
apartment in his palace and admitted him to 
the royal brotherhood. Later during his all- 
embracing travels he had visited Portugal, where 
it had been arranged that he should marry the 
sister of the Queen. With all this nonsense his 
followers were delighted, and the comedy was 
continued with renewed enthusiasm. 

His court formed a project to marry him to 
an illegitimate granddaughter of Louis XV., as 
some one " worthy of his blood." Hervegault, 
though feeling himself still pledged in a way 
to the sister of the Portuguese Queen, was at 

last persuaded to agree to the plan ; but before 

18 



274 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

it was carried out his star had set, the autho- 
rities had fallen upon this skilful impostor, and 
his sensational trial had begun. He was finally 
condemned to four years' imprisonment, and on 
leaving his prison he found his followers dis- 
persed. Bravely he set about to make new 
dupes, but his luck was gone, and his career 
sank into obscurity. It is said that he died 
in 1812, proclaiming himself to the end to be 
the son of Louis XVI. None doubts to-day, 
however, that he originated in the tailor's shop 
at Saint- L6. 

Mathurin Bruneau stood next to Hervegault 
chronologically amongst the more important pre- 
tenders, and also, as it happened, resembled him 
rather closely in the details of his career. Where 
Hervegault, however, depended for his success on 
personal charm and beauty and on a distinction 
of manner with which he had by some freak been 
graced, Bruneau's only equipment was an ex- 
treme ugliness and coarseness of appearance and 
manner, combined with a phenomenal impudence. 
To him certainly belongs the dubious distinction 
— though it seems never to have been conferred 
upon him till now — of having been the most 
brazen impostor that ever disgraced the earth. 
It is not his cleverness that is striking, nor his 
ingenuity. It is the monumental effrontery that 
enabled him to stand before people who knew 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 275 

he was not, and never could have been, Louis 
XVII., and to tell them over and over, *' I am 
your King ! I am the lost Dauphin ! " until by 
very force of impudence he compelled them to 
believe the lie. 

Bruneau was born in 1784, of even more 
lowly stock than the tailor's son, for his parents 
were labourers at Vezin in the department of 
Maine-et-Loire. When he was eleven, he left 
his home to go on an adventure-hunt, in which 
he was very promptly successful. He arrived 
one day, dusty and ill-clothed, at the house of 
a farmer and asked for food. 

''Who are you?" said the farmer. 

"I am un petit de Vezin — a child of Vezin," 
answered the boy. 

It chanced that lately in the civil war the 
chateau of the seigneur, the Baron de Vezin, 
had been sacked and pillaged. With the char- 
acteristic luck of the born adventurer, little 
Mathurin, by the ambiguous wording of his 
reply, roused in the mind of the simple farmer 
the idea that he was, not a child from Vezin, 
but a child of Vezin, the unfortunate seigneur. 

" What, are you the baron's son, the child 
of Vezin?" cried the farmer. 

Like a flash the tired little scoundrel took 
in the situation, saw his chance, and in the 
space of an instant performed a bit of mental 



276 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

gymnastics, and leapt from labourer's child to 
baron's son. 

*'Yes," said he sadly, and by the one word 
raised himself to a high place amongst the 
world's precocious children, taking rank along 
with the child saints and infant musicians as a 
novel prodigy — an eleven-year-old adventurer. 

Forthwith the supposed noble refugee was 
established as inmate of a near-by chateau, 
where he was treated as an equal by the sym- 
pathetic mistress. His gaucherie was laid down 
to the effects of the fear and ill-treatment he 
had suffered, but soon his awkwardness wore 
off. Little Bruneau took to deception as a 
duckling to water. In a few days he was fill- 
ing to perfection the role of persecuted baron's 
son, the aristocratic victim of civil wars. For 
a year this boy was able to play his part so 
well that of all the inmates of the chateau not 
a soul suspected him. It was a wonderful feat, 
and one which few adults suddenly transported 
from the coarsest poverty to noble surroundings 
could have equalled. 

Unfortunately, however, though through no 
fault of his own, he was found out. The brother 
of the Baron de Vezin heard of his little pseudo- 
nephew, and arriving one day at the chateau, 
with a few decisive words tipped over in an 
instant little Mathurin's neatly packed apple-cart. 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 277 

The boy was turned out, and for the next few 
years we know little of what happened to him. 

At nineteen he became a sailor, deserted his 
ship at an American port, and for ten years 
wandered about the United States, gaining his 
living turn by turn as baker, stone-mason, and 
as servant in a boarding-house. Finally, in 
1815, he returned to France, now calling him- 
self no longer Bruneau, but Charles de Navarre. 
Presently, after some minor adventures, the idea 
came to him of pretending to be the Dauphin. 
After considerable rebuffing, for the young man 
had with characteristic impudence selected for 
himself a role for which he was quite unqualified, 
both because he neither looked the part, nor 
had the slightest idea of the Dauphin's history, 
he at last gathered some followers and also 
got himself imprisoned in Rouen. 

It was then that all sorts of rumours began to 
be spread about concerning him : the Dauphin, 
it was said, was alive — he was in prison — there, 
in Rouen itself. People came to see him for 
themselves, and Bruneau, who had played so 
successfully at being the baron's son, was equally 
convincing in the part of long-lost Dauphin. 
Gifts and adoration were poured at the im- 
postor's feet. He chose for himself two secre- 
taries, who set themselves, with the help of 
the novel Le Cimetih^e de la Madeleine, to 



278 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

writing memoirs for the Bruneau-Dauphin, and 
to composing proclamations to which Mathurin 
could not even sign his royal name. 

Bruneau, in the meanwhile, employed himself 
in committing to memory long passages from 
books dealing with the imprisonment of the 
royal family, a subject of which he had been 
till then densely ignorant. He also attempted 
to approach the Dauphin's sister, now the 
Duchesse d'Angouleme, but his emissaries were 
unable to gain admittance to her. The public 
eye became more and more fixed on the im- 
postor. He, meantime, played the King luxu- 
riously in his prison — had a bath each day, ate 
fine food served splendidly, drank his coffee 
from a superb porcelain service, and took his 
liqueurs in noble crystals. 

At last, however, luck, the great god of 
scoundrels, turned its face away from Bruneau. 
He was examined officially, and, forgetting 
some of his carefully learned pages, muddled 
his account of the Temple captivity. This cer- 
tainly was a misfortune, but might have been 
repaired, had not, by an evil chance, the lady 
at whose chateau little Mathurin had played at 
being the baron's son appeared on the scene 
and recognised him. Bruneau still blustered, 
but confronted by some of his relatives, his 
imposture crumbled. Throughout his trial, con- 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 279 

ducted in the midst of an immense crowd, this 
amazing rascal behaved outrageously. Nothing 
could move him from his assertion that he was 
Louis XVII. He insulted judges and witnesses 
right and left, and maintained to the very end 
his attitude of shameless insolence. 

** He is Mathurin Bruneau," said the pro- 
secutor. 

The prisoner leapt to his feet furiously. '' Learn 
that I am, as I always have been, Louis XVII., 
son of the unhappy Louis XVI., and that neither 
you nor yours can stop me," he cried. "Take 
my life, if you like ! You have killed my father ; 
you can easily kill me too ! " 

An attempt was made to recover some of the 
money which had been bestowed on him by 
his dupes. 

'* Oh, nonsense ! " exclaimed Bruneau shrewdly. 
'' You are here at a comedy. You'll not get 
your money back." 

In the end he was condemned to pay a fine, 
and to seven years' imprisonment. 

After his trial he became half-crazed, and 
died in prison in 1825, leaving behind him a 
reputation, unenviable no doubt, but none the 
less incontestable, of having been one of the 
most brazen-faced rascals that ever lived. Curi- 
ously enough, there were some persons, so it 
is said by M. de la Sicotiere in his interesting 



280 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

study of the pretenders, who believed Bruneau 
was still alive in 1844, a trader with the negroes 
in Cayenne. But the trader was evidently a 
mock Mathurin Bruneau, just as Bruneau had 
been a mock Louis XVI I., and this counterfeit- 
ing of the counterfeit confers on the original 
impostor the highest mark of honour in the 
realm of rascals and adventurers. 

Following the extraordinary career of the arch- 
adventurer Bruneau there was for several years 
a period of calm, during which no pretenders of 
importance advanced their claims. Then came 
one who differed somewhat from these obvious 
impostors, whose deliberate attempts to cheat the 
public have just been set forth. This new self- 
styled Dauphin, Augustus Meves, is more diffi- 
cult to classify, and though there is no doubt 
he was an impostor, it is not clear whether he 
was wilfully so or whether he actually believed 
himself to be the lost king in whose name he 
masqueraded. One reason which points to his 
good faith is that his claims, though discussed 
privately at a much earlier date, were not 
advanced publicly until after his death. If this 
does not prove that Meves was an honest man, 
it shows at any rate that he must be looked 
upon as a very unskilful adventurer. 

It was in 1859 that Augustus Meves, of 
35 University Street, St. Pancras, a gentleman 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 281 

of musical tastes in business on the London Stock 
Exchange, died suddenly in a cab. In the 
following year appeared a book by his son in 
which it was announced that M. Meves had 
really been Louis XVIL During the next 
sixteen years four other similar books were 
issued, the most interesting of which was called 
** Louis XVIL versus the London Times,'' by 
Augustus de Bourbon — the younger Meves had 
by this time dropped his unaristocratic name for 
one more consistent with his pretensions — in 
which the author chided the newspaper bitterly 
for a scornful review it had printed of one of 
the earlier books on the Meves question. 

As far as the Meves question itself was con- 
cerned, there appears to have been little in it 
to justify the elder Meves and the young de 
Bourbon in their lofty ideas. Meves possessed, 
without any doubt, a wonderful resemblance 
to the Bourbons. His photograph might be 
mistaken easily for a portrait of Charles X., and 
an incident is recounted of how, dining one day 
in a restaurant in the Strand, a stranger flung 
down on the table a French coin, exclaiming, 
*' How like this gentleman is to Louis XVI. ! " 
He had, moreover, scars in the same places that 
Louis XVIL would have had scars. Beyond 
that he had nothing to go on. She whom he 
had regarded as his mother — so he said — had 



282 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

confessed to him at the time of her husband's 
death, when Augustus Meves was a young man, 
that he was really the Dauphin, and had pledged 
him to secrecy so long as she lived. Meves 
believed that this reputed mother of his had 
been a lady-in-waiting on Marie-Antoinette at 
Versailles, and that in some way she assisted 
at the Dauphin's escape. Meves professed also 
to have vague recollections of a strange child- 
hood, a remembrance of having sat '* on the knee 
of some great lady," and when in manhood he 
visited the Palace of Versailles, the great stair- 
case seemed familiar to him. 

All this is very weak, so weak indeed that 
it almost convinces us that Meves was sincere. 
Surely an impostor would have contrived a 
more detailed and intelligent story than this. 
Whether Meves was mentally unhinged and 
evolved the whole story out of his brain, or 
whether old Mrs. Meves really told him the 
story, either with intent to deceive or because 
she herself was irresponsible, it is impossible to 
decide, but it certainly seems likely that, how- 
ever the story originated, Meves believed it quite 
sincerely. 

In 1830 he wrote to the lady who in his 
eyes was his sister, and told her about his scars, 
and the marks on his person, and of his sup- 
posed mother's confession. The year following 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 283 

he wrote again, but the Duchesse d'Angouleme 
paid no attention. All in all the Meves episode 
is rather a curious bit of psychology than a matter 
of importance in the history of the Dauphin 
pretenders. 

The post-mortem history of Louis XVII. is 
full of these human curiosities. Some of them 
were mad, like Persat, who, unhinged by a wound 
he had received in his head, suddenly imagined 
himself to be the King, took to issuing proclama- 
tions and writing memoirs. In the lurid story of 
his escape he recounted how he had been carried 
away from the Temple by an organ-grinder, who 
had concealed him inside the instrument. After- 
wards he had been drugged in such a way as 
to be turned deaf and dumb for ten years. 
Meanwhile he made the visit to America, which 
is the inevitable /z^^^ de resistance in the stories 
of all the pretenders. This unfortunate creature 
was finally shut up in the insane asylum at 
Bicetre. 

Others were made Dauphins despite them- 
selves by their mystery-loving acquaintance. Of 
this number was Pere Fulgence, a Trappist of 
Bellefontaine, who, for certain strange matters 
in his behaviour, was pronounced to be the 
long-lost King, while he himself — truly a comic 
situation ! — supported energetically the claims of 
another pretender, Richemont. 



284 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Perhaps the most extraordinary of all this 
fantastic brotherhood, however, was a personage 
known as Mademoiselle Savalette de Lange, 
who, when she died at Versailles in 1858, was 
discovered to be, despite her petticoats, a man. 
She had played the woman unsuspected for more 
than fifty years, and when the masquerade was 
discovered, people naturally enough wondered 
why it had been carried on. Since they could 
think of no more likely explanation, they pro- 
nounced Mademoiselle Savalette de Lange to 
have been the Dauphin. Nothing supports 
this wild hypothesis, but it is interesting in that 
it shows, by its very absurdity, how unconvinced 
the French public has always been in the story 
of the death in the Temple, since they were so 
ready to recognise in any man in petticoats or 
priest of mysterious conduct the surviving King 
of France. 

Of the forty Dauphins there remain now to 
be considered three, those only whose claims 
are at the present day recognised as having 
any importance amongst a mass of obvious im- 
postors and lunatics. These three are Eleazar 
Williams — who was known as Onwarenhiiaki, 
the Iroquois chief — the ex-Baron de Richemont, 
and Naundorff, whose grandson calls himself 
to-day by the title of Jean III., and numbers 
his followers by the hundred. 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 285 

The scene of Williams's exploits was America, 
and like Augustus Meves he seems almost too 
incompetent a person to have concocted and 
carried through the elaborate imposture which 
occupied for several years the attention of the 
American press, and which has been from his 
own day until now the subject of frequent books. 

Eleazar Williams's story is as follows : — ** You 
must imagine," said he, *'a child who, as far 
as he knows anything, was an idiot. His mind 
is a blank until thirteen or fourteen years of / 
age. He was destitute even of consciousness " 
that can be remembered until that period. He 
was bathing in Lake George among a group 
of Indian boys. He clambered with the fear- 
lessness of idiocy to the top of a high rock. 
He plunged head-foremost into the water. He 
was taken up insensible and laid in an Indian 
hut. He was brought to life. There was the 
blue sky, there were the mountains, there were 
the waters. That was the first I knew of life." 

This boy, suddenly endowed with brain and 
consciousness, found himself living in an Indian 
family in the State of New York, passing as 
their son, Eleazar Williams. He grew up so, 
went to school, studied for the ministry, and 
became a missionary to the Indians. In 1812 
he was made a chief by the Iroquois tribe, 
and received the name of Onwarenhiiaki. The 



286 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Indians liked him ; he appears to have been 
a simple, kindly soul of very inferior intelligence. 
He never entirely recovered from the imbecility 
of his childhood, and was incapable of any but 
mediocre mental efforts. He was happy, though, 
and respected, was married and a father. 

Suddenly — if we are to believe his story, and 
it is preposterous to suppose a man of his calibre 
capable of so complicated a falsehood — a bomb- 
shell was dropped at his feet by the Prince 
de Joinville, son of Louis-Philippe, then King 
of France. 

It was in October — so runs Williams's tale 
— that he and the Prince de Joinville, then 
visiting America, found themselves together on 
a boat going from Buffalo to Green Bay. En 
route, the captain came to Williams and said, 
*' The Prince, Mr. Williams, requests me to say 
that he desires to have an interview with you, 
and will be happy either to have you come to 
him or to allow me to introduce him to you." 

Williams sent back a message presenting his 
compliments to the Prince and acceding to his 
request. A little later, the Prince joined the 
missionary on the deck of the ship. " I was 
sitting at the time on a barrel," remarks Williams, 
with a naweti which is alone sufficient to stamp 
his whole story as genuine. 

De Joinville — the story runs — shook Eleazar 







CLEAZAR WILLIAMS, THE IROQUOIS CHIEF AND SELF-STYLED DAUPHIN 
From a confejnporary eiigra-uing- 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 287 

"earnestly and respectfully" by the hand, and 
treated him during the short voyage with a 
deference which astonished the other passengers 
and the Prince's retinue. Arrived at their des- 
tination, he asked Williams to stay at his hotel, 
and that night, under a pledge of secrecy, to 
which Williams agreed only conditionally, he 
made certain revelations to the missionary, and 
then laid before him a parchment which he 
asked him to read. 

Williams spent four or five hours perusing 
it, and read it over and over many times. In 
substance it was, '* A solemn abdication of the 
crown of France in favour of Louis- Philippe 
by Charles- Louis, the son of Louis XVL" 
Eleazar, to his amazement, understood that there 
was designated by this latter title himself, the 
Indian missionary. In exchange for the abdi- 
cation he would receive a princely establishment 
either in America or France, and the restoration 
of all the private property of the royal family 
rightfully belonging to him as the heir of Louis 
XV I . After long consideration, Williams declined 
to sign. He could not, said he, be the instru- 
ment of bartering away with his own hand the 
rights pertaining to him by birth. The Prince 
showed annoyance, but Williams, having acquired 
through the disclosure a position of superiority 
over the young man, rebuked him. 



288 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

** When I spoke of superiority," says Williams, 
** the Prince immediately assumed a respectful 
attitude." Soon after, they parted. 

Poor Eleazar's head was swimming with amaze- 
ment. He the rightful King of France ! — it 
was staggering. He went to the Indian woman 
whom till then he had called his mother, and 
sought some confirmation of the story, but she 
would not speak. He explained this by the 
theory that ''the Romish priests" (Williams was 
a Protestant) had been tampering with her, had 
told her that if this Protestant should come to 
the throne of France many souls would be lost 
and incalculable harm done, so she must give 
no help in bringing about an event so dangerous. 
His ** reputed Indian mother" — for it was thus 
that Williams now spoke of her — kept, there- 
fore, her mouth tight sealed, and gave no evi- 
dence either to confirm or to deny the Prince's 
story. 

Williams, however, discovered that he, like 
Meves, had scars in places where the Dauphin 
would have had scars. One day a Frenchman 
read the Indian an account of Louis XVI I. 's 
imprisonment, and of how Simon had hit him 
with a towel, inflicting wounds, one over the 
left eye, the other to the right of the nose. 
** And now," said he, " let me look at your 
face." In the places indicated were scars. 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 289 

'' Mon DieuV' cried the Frenchman. ''What 
proof do I need more?" — What indeed? 

Onwarenhiiaki, the Iroquois chief, was cer- 
tainly very unHke a man of Indian parentage. 
His hair was brown and soft, his eyes hazel, 
his cheekbones not high, as is invariably the 
case with Indians. In short, he was, beyond 
any possibility of doubt, a white man. 

But the fact that Eleazar was not an Indian 
is very inadequate proof that he was a Dauphin. 
Williams, none the less, was fully convinced of 
his royal identity. In 1848 he announced him- 
self to be the Dauphin. The news spread and 
aroused great interest ; in America, France, and 
England, the newspapers spoke of it. 

Presently, as was the case with most of the 
pretenders, he gained an ardent prophet. It was 
the Rev. John Hanson, who published a long 
article in Putnam s Magazine, in which were re- 
counted the story of Eleazar's mysterious child- 
hood and of the Prince de Joinville's revelations. 
This article, copied in an English periodical, fell 
under the eyes of the Prince, who sent through 
his secretary a long letter to the publishers, 
stating that, though he had had considerable 
intercourse with Williams in 1841 in the cir- 
cumstances described by the missionary, and 
had learned from his lips much information of 
great interest about the early history of the 
19 



290 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

French in America, the really important part of 
the alleged conversation — the matter of Williams's 
identity with Louis XVII. — was never mentioned 
between them. That part of the missionary's 
story was, according to the Prince de Joinville, 
**a work of imagination." 

Now a work of imagination is the last thing of 
which Williams's simple, God-fearing mind would 
have been capable. If there is any one thing 
that is sure in the morass of uncertainty which is 
called ''The Louis XVII. Question," it is that 
Williams never concocted the story of his pre- 
tended royal origin. He may have been trusting 
enough to believe the story on absurdly inade- 
quate grounds, but never in the world could he 
have invented it. 

If, on the other hand, the Prince did really 
come to America on behalf of Louis-Philippe 
armed with *'the solemn abdication," how are we 
to explain the French king's insane indiscretion 
in telling this harmlessly ignorant man matters 
which might turn him into a dangerous rival ? 
No course could have been, in the circumstances, 
more ridiculous. There remains, therefore, only 
one likely explanation of the crotchet that poor 
Onwarenhiiaki carried about in his head for so 
many years. Is it not very possible that the 
Prince de Joinville, a youth of twenty-three, may 
have permitted himself to play a little practical 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 291 

joke on the old Indian clergyman whom he met 
on his travels, may have worked on the mis- 
sionary's simplicity and gullibility, never fancying 
Eleazar would take the matter so seriously, and 
may have, in after years, found it more advisable 
to deny the whole transaction than to acknow- 
ledge the undignified part he had played in 
the cruel farce? The document — the poor old 
countryman hanging over it bewildered in a 
backwoods inn — the young Prince chuckling 
behind his hand : one can picture it all and 
believe readily that it was by the practical joke 
of this boy that a continent was agitated. 

Williams, it is said, never sought to make gain 
from his pretensions, and this appears to be true. 
The same, indeed, is the fact with several of the 
pretenders who were admittedly fraudulent ; and it 
is a curious problem for the psychologist that men 
should have taken on their souls the burden of so 
great a lie with no compensating hope of thereby 
enriching their pocket-books. Little more is 
known of Williams's career. His prophet, Hanson, 
died, and after two pretended attempts at assas- 
sination, Williams himself died in 1858. 

That his claims, however, still attract notice 
and sympathy is shown by the publication, as 
lately as 1905, of a book in which Mr. Publius V. 
Lawson makes Williams his hero, and shows a 
photograph of an amiable-looking, bald-headed 



292 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

gentleman, with a conspicuously patterned neck- 
tie, in which is thrust a fleur-de-lis pin. Under 
this portrait appears the legend, ** Mr. George 
Williams — 1904. The last of the Bourbons and 
only rightful claimant to the French throne — 
grandson of Eleazar Williams." In the text of 
Mr. Lawson's book we read that " the last of the 
Bourbons " now lives in St. Louis, and, having 
no children, is indeed the last of his race. 

We may explain Eleazar Williams as the 
victim of a joking Prince, but Richemont, the 
next of the trio of important pretenders, we 
cannot explain at all. An impostor he was, with- 
out doubt, but what was his real origin, or what 
the name he ought to have borne, no one can 
tell. Of all the forty Dauphins he was the most 
mysterious. During his career he used eleven 
different aliases. When he exclaimed at his trial, 
" Gentlemen, if I am not the Due de Normandie, 
who am I ? " none could answer him. The ques- 
tion is still unanswered. For all history can 
prove to the contrary, Richemont may have 
dropped from the sky one fine day in the early 
part of the nineteenth century. 

Richemont said that he had escaped from the 
Temple through the help of the Simons, and had 
been taken immediately to a house in Paris where 
he met Josephine de Beauharnais. After re- 
maining there a few hours only, he was taken to 
La Vendee to the royalist army, where he went 



TH£ FORTY DAUPHINS 293 

about disguised as a girl. Presently, the Prince 
de Conde placed him in the ranks of the French 
army. As a young man he visited la Simon in 
the hospital, and was recognised by her as the 
boy she had helped to save. Then he went off 
to America, where he remained for more than 
ten years, returning in 1815. 

It was now that he commenced his operations. 
He had no wish to claim the throne, but asked 
only to be recognised for what he was, and to be 
allowed to live in France. Louis XVHL, how- 
ever, placed little belief in such abnegation, and 
gave his self-styled nephew no encouragement. 
It was then arranged that Richemont should 
see the Duchesse dAngouleme. His friends had 
arranged that he should meet her all unprepared 
for the encounter in the park at Versailles. The 
meeting took place in the presence of the Due 
de Berri, the Prince de Cond6, and others. The 
Duchesse looked at him with astonishment and 
emotion. Richemont and his friends asserted 
that she recognised him for her long-lost brother. 
At last she exclaimed, "Go! go! You have 
been the cause of much unhappiness, and my 
arms shall never open to receive the enemy of my 
family." Richemont professed to find in these 
words a reference to the terrible accusations which 
the Dauphin had brought against his mother and 
aunt, and set down her refusal to accept him for 
what he pretended to be to political reasons. 



294 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Nothing discouraged at this rebuff, Richemont 
issued to all the Powers of Europe a formal pro- 
test against Louis XVI 1 1. 's having stolen his 
throne. Louis XVIII. retaliated by bringing 
about Richemont's imprisonment at Milan for 
seven and a half years. Finally Richemont, free 
again, returned to Paris, protested again, this time 
against the election of Louis-Philippe, and attracted 
many sympathisers. He was handsome and attrac- 
tive, a man of medium height, blonde, well-built, 
bright-eyed and animated, graceful in his move- 
ments, and sweet-voiced. It is no wonder he 
gained sympathy. In 1833 he was arrested again, 
kept in prison for fourteen months and then tried, 
though no one would consent to plead for him. 

His trial was a very exciting affair. The most 
curious incident occurred when, in the midst of 
proceedings, there appeared a personage dressed 
all in black, with white hair and bearing an enor- 
mous document sealed with the arms of France. 
This man had come to protest in the name of 
the other Dauphin (Naundorff) against the pre- 
tensions of this Dauphin (Richemont). It was 
almost farcical. 

On the charge of having plotted against the 
government, Richemont was convicted, and con- 
demned to twelve years' imprisonment in a for- 
tress. Meantime, it was suggested to him — as 
he declared — that if he would give up his pre- 




NAUNDORFF (SOI DISANT LOUIS XVIl) 
After an mipnblished portrait by Clayton i7i the possession of M. FotUon de Vaulx 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 295 

tensions to the throne, the Princesse Clementine, 
daughter of Louis-Philippe, would be given to 
him as wife and his parentage would be acknow- 
ledged. This offer he declined loftily. Within 
a few months he escaped from prison and went 
abroad, returning to France in the amnesty of 
1840 and continuing his claims. 

He and Naundorff were deadly rivals, which 
is only natural in consideration of the fact that, 
of the forty would-be Louis XVILs, they alone 
present claims that are worthy of really serious 
consideration. The two men insulted one another 
and cast reflections on one another in a series 
of pamphlets and through the voices of their 
respective followers. 

Richemont had the better of the struggle in 
one way, since he survived his rival by eight 
years, but his success was never so great as 
Naundorff's, and nowadays, though he has a 
certain number of followers, comparatively little 
interest is taken in him, while the claims of 
Naundorff are still a live question in France. 
This is for one reason due to the fact that 
Richemont left no heirs, while Naundorff's de- 
scendants have been many and energetic. It is 
a curious coincidence that both men died on the 
loth August, that date which years before had 
been so fatally important in the life of the child 
whose identity they claimed. 



296 



THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 



It was in the chateau of the Comtesse d'Apchier, 
whose husband had been a page to Louis XVI., 
and who herself beHeved entirely in his claims, 
that Richemont died in 1853. In his death 
certificate he was called " Monsieur Louis-Charles 
de France," and over his grave a monument was 
erected, bearing this inscription : — 



CI-GIT 

Louis-Charles de France 

FiLS de Louis XVI. et de Marie- Antoinette 

Ne a Versailles le 27 mars, 1785, 

MORT A GlEIZE le 10 AOUT, 1 853. 



Five years passed, and then the Minister 
of the Interior gave orders that this legend 
should be removed. In its place were put some 
words Richemont himself had pronounced to 
the Comtesse, in a fit of melancholy, a few days 
before his death : — 



1785. 

Nul ne dira sur sa tombe, 

Pauvre Louis, 

Que tu fus a plaindre! 

Prie Dieu pour lui. 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 297 

Both inscriptions still exist; for instead of 
scraping the stone away when the change was 
made, the stone was simply turned around, the 
offending side placed against the chapel wall, and 
the new inscription, which alone by the date, 
1785, preserves Richemont's pretensions, put 
toward the world. Thus the man who came, 
none knows whence, to play his romantic role 
of lost Prince, sleeps under a tomb of very fitting 
ambiguity. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE FORTY DAUPHINS {continued) 

NAUNDORFF now alone remains to be con- 
sidered of the trio of foremost pretenders, 
of whom he was indubitably the most important. 
His cause is still a burning question in France, 
and has been the subject of scores upon scores 
of books, and the raison d'Hre of at least five 
regular magazines, of which two still survive and 
flourish, La Ldgitimitd, founded twenty-five years 
ago by *' Osmond," a well-known Naundorffiste 
writer, and La Revue Historique de la Question 
Louis XV I L, a paper of more recent growth. 
To the most sceptical there is something in 
Naundorff's career which cannot altogether be 
scoffed at. He cannot be thrust offhand into 
the little band of the forty adventurers. Even 
though one refuses to take him at his own 
valuation, one must at least treat Naundorff 
with respect. 

On the 26th May 1833 ^ mysterious person, 
handsome, noble-looking, and of distinguished 

manners, arrived in Paris. He was no other 

298 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 299 

than Naundorff, come after many struggles to 
seek the rights which he protested were his. 
At first he met with discouragement, but pre- 
sently his army began to gather together. 
Madame de Rambaud, who had been nurse to 
the Dauphin from birth, was certain she re- 
cognised in this man of fifty the child she had 
held on her knees ; other persons from the 
old court were equally positive of his identity. 
His success was prodigious, and in four months 
it is said that no less than four millions were 
laid at the feet of this man. 

Who was he, and what had been his ante- 
cedents ? His opponents called him a Jew from 
Potsdam. Only a few years ago M. Otto 
Friedrichs, one of the most accomplished of 
Naundorffistes, offered to pay M. Anatole France 
10,000 francs if he could substantiate this state- 
ment, and the forfeit is still unpaid. Naundorff 's 
own story is that, after his escape from the 
Temple by a complicated process of substituted 
little boys, he went through a quantity of adven- 
tures and misfortunes, and suffered, in all, some 
seventeen years of more or less rigorous cap- 
tivity before he was twenty-four. The most 
trying experience of all was a four years' im- 
prisonment in a black dungeon, where rats 
''about the size of rabbits" tormented him. 

Escaping from this, he established himself in 



300 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Berlin as a watchmaker, but presently, pursued 
as ever by his enemies, he was forced to leave 
the city and go to Spandau, where on the advice 
of a friend he definitely assumed the name of 
Charles William Naundorff. He now sent a 
friend to the Duchesse d'Angoul^me, who must, 
poor lady, have found herself greatly confused 
amongst all this crowd of men pretending to 
be her brother. To this friend, M. Marsin, 
Naundorff furnished proofs of his identity with 
Louis XVI I. *' I do not know what became of 
him," said Naundorff in his memoirs, **but I 
have been told that he was arrested and im- 
prisoned at Rouen, and that an individual by 
the name of Mathurin Bruneau was substituted 
for him, while he himself was kept out of the 
way." — A fine muddle this last! 

The Duchesse dAngouleme ignored him ; 
everywhere he was thwarted and discouraged, 
and in 1818 he took the resolution ''never to 
appear again on the scene of the world, but 
to consign himself to eternal oblivion." Free, 
therefore, to ignore his rank, he married Made- 
moiselle Jeanne Einers, a fine-looking girl of 
simple parentage, who did not hear of her hus- 
band's secret till long after her marriage. 

This alliance seemed at the time to sign his 
abdication from his royal claims. The fact is, 
however, that had it not been for the marriage 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 301 

and for the energetic procedure of his wife and 
children after his death, Naundorff would to-day 
be as completely forgotten as Richemont and 
the Iroquois chief. Two years later, Naundorff 
appears to have changed his mind about ''eternal 
oblivion," for he wrote again to the Due de Berry, 
his supposed cousin, who replied encouragingly 
that he found he had been deceived about Naun- 
dorff. Ten days later, however, while Naun- 
dorff was waiting eagerly for the Due de Berry 
to do something on his behalf, word came that 
the Due had been assassinated. Naundorff drew 
from this the conclusion that the Due de Berry 
had perished for his interference on behalf of 
Louis XVI 1 1. 's enemy, himself. 

Entirely giving over his dream of oblivion, 
Naundorff then determined to go to France and 
to see in person the Duehesse d'Angoul^me. 
This decision he made in 1820. It was thirteen 
years before he was able to carry it out. The 
fates, or, as Naundorff thought, his enemies, 
were against him. About to go to France, he 
was detained by a charge of having — as he 
grandiloquently phrases it — ''endeavoured to 
circulate false coin" — "the sole indication of his 
august origin," to quote an unsympathetic and 
cynical writer. To this other accusations were 
added. He was charged with arson, with theft, 
and with murder. The evidence against him 



302 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

seems to have been slender and the court pre- 
judiced. He was condemned, and remained in 
prison till 1828. At last, after a score of mis- 
adventures, he reached Paris in time to send 
his rather laughable emissary to the trial of his 
rival Richemont, and to be recognised by that 
strange mystic, Martin de Gallardon, as **the 
Heaven-sent King of France." 

This Martin de Gallardon, the second Joan 
of Arc, is a strange figure in nineteenth-century 
history, and the seriousness with which Louis 
XVni. and his government treated the visionary, 
prevents our setting him aside as altogether 
negligible. 

Thomas Ignace Martin was a petty labourer 
in Gallardon near Chartres, a man of thirty- 
three, the father of four children, and a person 
whose conduct had never shown signs of hysteria 
or religious mania of any sort. On the afternoon 
of January 15, 18 16 — in the many books that 
have been written about him these details are 
most painstakingly recorded — he was in the 
fields, working, when suddenly there appeared 
before him a man an inch or two over five feet 
tall, of slender, pale face, dressed in a long, 
straight coat of light colour buttoned down to 
his feet, his shoes fastened on with strings, and 
on his head a round, tall hat. This peculiar 
figure spoke to Martin. 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 303 

** You must go find the King and say to him 
that his person is in danger," said the creature. 

Martin, astonished, replied, *' But you could 
find others besides me to do such a commis- 
sion." 

" No," said the unknown ; '' 'tis you who are 
to go." ^^ 

** But," objected Martin again, '' since you know 
so much about it, you could very well go to the 
King yourself and tell him the message. Why 
do you seek out a poor man like me, who does 
not know how to explain himself?" 

'*It is not I who am going," was the reply; 
**it is you. Pay attention to what I say to you, 
and do exactly as you are told." 

And then, suddenly, the figure disappeared. 
The feet of it seemed to lift themselves up from 
the ground and the head and shoulders to sink 
lower, so that its body became smaller and 
smaller, till finally it faded away altogether in 
mid-air. Martin, more alarmed at this fashion 
of departure than at the apparition of the crea- 
ture and its strange words, tried to rush away, 
but could not, and was held there in the field 
by some force until his work was finished. 

Martin reported what had happened to the 
cure, who set it down to imagination on Martin's 
part, and was little impressed. However, three 
days later the creature returned, and met Martin 



304 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

when he was fetching apples from his cellar. 
Two days after, the labourer met him again at 
the door of the outhouse, where he kept fodder 
for his horses. Martin was terrified, and fled ; 
but as these apparitions were repeated, at church, 
in the road, at the threshold of his own house, he 
grew gradually accustomed to them, though the 
sudden disappearance of the creature never lost 
its power to bewilder and alarm him. To all but 
him the figure was invisible. One day, when his 
family was near, the unknown appeared before 
him, and said, '* Carry out your commission; do 
as I have told you, for you shall not have peace 
till you have obeyed." The others neither sav/ 
nor heard anything. 

At last, Martin having lost sleep and appetite 
from these visitations, the cure became alarmed 
and sent him to the bishop at Versailles, who 
asked him many questions and laid the matter 
before the police. Presently he was taken to 
Paris, questioned by several officials and exa- 
mined by a doctor, who pronounced him to be, 
despite the visions, quite sane and in perfect 
health. It was at this time that the unknown 
— now Martin's constant adviser — announced to 
him that he was the Archangel Raphael, and 
told him also that France would not be at peace 
till 1840. 

News was brought to Martin that he was about 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 305 

to be summoned before the King. The un- 
known, appearing simultaneously with the notifi- 
cation, assured Martin that when he was in the 
royal presence, he, Raphael, would supply him 
with suitable matter to talk of. The labourer 
was then taken to an asylum to be kept under 
surveillance for a fortnight. The unknown con- 
tinued to appear to him frequendy. 

**The next time he comes," said one of the 
asylum authorides flippantly to Martin, "ask 
him if he will not take me under his protection. 
I should be very glad to be under the protection 
of an angel." 

There was no need for Martin to deliver the 
message, for when the angel appeared a short 
time after, he said, " There is some one here who 
has asked that I should protect him. You will 
say to him that those who profess religion and 
have a firm faith shall be saved." 

In April Martin left the asylum, where he had 
behaved with a calm and good sense that seem 
ridiculously out of place on the part of a man 
who professed to be having daily chats with an 
archangel, and at last went to see Louis XVIII. 
Said Louis to him, as he entered the room in 
the Tuileries where the King was awaiting him, 
•'Good day, Martin," and then bade him sit 
down. Martin was still in his labourer's clothes, 
the King dressed grandly with decorations and 



306 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

orders. All friendliness, Louis asked the man 
what it was he had been so anxious to communi- 
cate to him. 

In accordance with the promise of the vision, 
Martin found himself supplied with words. He 
told the King of matters which Louis had sup- 
posed known alone to himself and God. 

Then Martin said, '* I have to confide in you 
that the place you occupy does not belong to 
you. 

" What ! " cried Louis, and listened aghast while 
Martin told him that the son of Louis XVI. was 
not dead, and that he, Martin, had a supernatural 
mission to announce to Louis that he should seek 
out this son and give to him the throne. Louis 
wept, and so did the labourer ; the courtiers, 
who, it is said, watched the interview through 
the keyhole, were full of amazement. At last, 
after being nearly an hour together, Louis dis- 
missed the visionary, offering him a gratuity 
which he declined. 

Immediately after this, Martin returned to 
Gallardon, resumed his work, and lived there 
in unbroken simplicity for nearly twenty years, 
seeing no more visions and attending to his 
business without affectation. Just before his 
death, he recognised in Naundorff the lost 
King of whom he had spoken to Louis XVIII. 
When, a few months later, he died under cir- 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 307 

cumstances which suggested foul play, his widow 
fancied he had been murdered for his refusal 
to retract his acceptance of Naundorff. 

Whether Martin's death was from an un- 
natural cause or not, the rumour that he had 
been murdered for his recognition of Naundorff 
was, of course, a fine thing for Naundorff's 
claims. Naundorff was now gaining a tre- 
mendous success. An attempt had been made 
to assassinate him by three men who set upon 
him in Paris one night and stabbed him several 
times. The insignificant wounds he received 
were a small price to pay for the advertise- 
ment. Finally, he announced his intention of 
claiming by law his right to the inheritance 
of what private property had been left by 
Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette. This was 
in 1836. 

In the behaviour of the government in face 
of this audacious declaration we see what is 
one of the strongest points in support of Naun- 
dorff's claims. Instead of imprisoning and try- 
ing him, as had been done in the case of the 
other pretenders, they seemed to fear the result 
of a public airing of his pretensions, and in 
June arrested and drove him out of the country. 
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the 
government that so plainly avoided coming to 
an issue with this man did so from fear. 



308 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

His wanderings recommencing, Naundorff 
sought refuge in London, and settled in Camber- 
well, where it is said he formed a friendship 
with Meves, the two of them exchanging re- 
miniscences of their pretended experiences in 
the Temple. His popularity was now at its 
height. His followers drew obvious conclusions 
from the pusillanimous behaviour of the police. 
Moreover, another attempt was made to assas- 
sinate him, which increased popular enthusiasm. 

With fatal and unnatural indiscretion, Naun- 
dorff chose this moment to launch a religious 
work over which he had been brooding for 
some time. This he called La Doctrine 
Celeste, and its character was not such as to 
inspire in his followers a belief in the author's 
common-sense. This publication greatly injured 
his cause, and his band commenced to dwindle 
sadly. Naundorff now removed to Holland, 
where he announced that he had invented a 
wonderful new projectile. In the midst of his 
efforts to introduce his invention, he died at 
Delft, on August lo, 1845. -^ ^^w months 
before, a final attempt had been made to kill 
him, and his partisans did not hesitate to set 
down his death to poison. 

His funeral resembled a true royal ceremony, 
addresses were delivered, and the Dutch govern- 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 309 

ment permitted the inscription on his tomb in 
Delft of the following words : — 



ICI REPOSE 

LOUIS XVII. 

Charles-Louis, Due de Normandie, 

Roi DE France et de Navarre, 

Ne a Versailles le 27 mars, 1785, 

Decede a Delft le 10 aout, 1845. 



In 1863 ^^^ States-General of the Nether- 
lands authorised Naundorff's son to assume the 
name of de Bourbon, and the Delft tombstone 
has been left undisturbed, despite its arrogant 
claims. This nominal reparation, however, did 
not satisfy his descendants. Within five years 
of his death his widow and children appeared 
in the French courts to claim their privilege to 
enjoy the civil rights belonging to them as the 
representatives of Louis XVI. 's son. The dis- 
tinguished Jules Favre pleaded for them — he 
who shared with Gruau de la Barre, a former 
magistrate and author of many large books 
about this hero, the honour of being Naundorffs 
chief prophets. Notwithstanding M. Favre's 
eloquence, the case was lost. In 1874 the 



310 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Naundorffs appealed against the judgment of 
the first trial, and lost again. 

Undismayed by these two defeats, however, 
the Naundorffistes have formed for themselves 
a little world. On Naundorff's death they 
dubbed his eldest son ** Charles X.," and on 
the death of the latter recognised as his suc- 
cessor a younger son, "Charles XI." The 
present uncrowned Naundorff is called **Jean 
III." The enthusiasm of the Naundorffistes is 
a wonderful example of devotion to an abstract 
idea. There is none of them who would wish 
to give the throne of France to Jean III., their 
interest is merely to right an historic wrong, 
to establish in the public mind a conviction 
that Louis XVII. escaped from the Temple 
and became the man afterwards known as 
Naundorff. 

In the first of these attempts they have 
secured a fair amount of success. Half a 
century ago, the historian felt himself justified 
in speaking in these words of the question of 
the Dauphin's survival and of those who believed 
in it : *' However great the number of knaves 
in the world may be, they are always sure to 
find an ample proportion of fools and dupes." 
With further research into the mystery, however, 
opinions have changed, and no one may call a 
student of the period a fool or a dupe because 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 311 

he recognises the fact that the Dauphin's death 
is a thing very insufficiently proved. So much 
Naundorffistes have established, at any rate ; but 
in the direction of persuading the public that 
their hero was indeed Louis XVII. they have 
been less successful. 

The fact is that there is something subtly 
unconvincing about Naundorff. In judging his 
claims or those of any other of the self-styled 
Dauphins, one must depend to a large extent 
on instinct, since positive documented evidence is 
practically non-existent, and since what evidence 
there is on behalf of each pretender contradicts 
positively the evidence of every other pretender 
— a fact that serves, though perhaps unfairly, 
to cast suspicion on the cases of the whole forty. 
One may not say in a case of this sort, *' I 
believe in this pretender and disbelieve in that 
one, because the first offers convincing proof 
of his identity and the second does not," for 
no one of them offers real proofs. What one 
may say is merely, ** I believe in the identity 
of this pretender, not only because he is able 
to bring forward the best evidence in support 
of his claims, but also because I see that his 
character was one which showed truthfulness, 
in so far as I can detect truth or lie, and sound 
sense, the two qualities most necessary in a 
person who is to convince me, by mere force 



312 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

of saying it, that he has been the victim of 
terrible fraud and injustice." 

Now, in the first of these counts, Naundorff 
stands pre-eminent amongst the pretenders. The 
proofs of his identity, though sHght, are by far 
better than that offered by any other of the 
forty Dauphins. They lie not in the evidence 
he was able to advance, but in the treatment 
he received — in the fact that he was able to 
convince Madame de Rambaud that he was as 
he pretended, to convince her not alone by re- 
semblance — always a tricky proof of identity 
— but also by his knowledge of small private 
details in the childhood of Louis XVII. ; in the 
fact that he was never brought to trial as the 
other pretenders had been, but was hustled out 
of the country by a government obviously nervous 
about what might be brought to light at his trial, 
if the case were allowed to come before the 
courts ; and finally, in the peculiar and embar- 
rassed behaviour of the Duchesse d'Angouleme 
in regard to him. 

We have here three good reasons why Naun- 
dorff's claim cannot be treated with entire dis- 
respect ; but they are insufficient to prove his 
case if we cannot add to them the testimony 
of character, and cannot see in Naundorff a 
man marked by the necessary qualities of truth- 
fulness and good sense. Truthfulness is not 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 313 

always easy to recognise. To any one, however, 
who will read Naundorff's autobiography, '* An 
Abridged Account of the Misfortunes of the 
Dauphin," it will be clear that this is not a 
man of absolute accuracy. He contradicts him- 
self in details ; his autobiography does not in 
its smaller points bear the stamp of absolute 
sincerity. It reads, in short, like a story. Here, 
then, lies doubt as to Naundorff's truthfulness. 

It is equally hard to believe in his good 
sense. What can we make of the judgment of 
a man who hobnobbed with Martin de Gallardon, 
and who in later life set himself up as a pro- 
phet, wrote a work of so absurd a character as 
La Doctrine Celeste? Surely he is not to be 
depended on. 

Had Naundorff shown, in addition to the 
evidence in his favour, that he was, in such 
matters as can be checked by our own know- 
ledge, a man of absolute truthfulness and of a 
clear intelligence, we should have felt his case 
to be practically proved and his claims estab- 
lished. As it is, we decline to believe in them, 
yet acknowledge we must that there is much 
in Naundorff's career that is very mysterious 
if we do not explain it by the fact that he was, 
as he pretended, the son of Louis XVI. 

If Naundorff was not the Dauphin, how did 
he know enough of the intimate details of the 



314 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Dauphin's childhood to satisfy Madame de Ram- 
baud that he was indeed he whom she had 
nursed years before? How -was it that he 
recognised the little blue coat as one he had 
worn at Versailles, despite the fact that the 
still suspicious lady, to test him, assured him 
he had worn it in Paris? Why was it that 
the government feared him, and the Duchesse 
d'Angouleme behaved so strangely when he was 
mentioned? He must evidently have known 
something, have possessed some secret which 
made him a very dangerous person to a govern- 
ment that wished no doubt to be cast on the 
death of Louis XVH., and to the sister who 
— if we grant that the Dauphin escaped from 
the Temple — had shown herself a selfish and 
wicked woman in permitting her brother to lose 
his name and his throne for the sake of herself 
and her husband. What this secret was, and 
how he came in possession of it, we cannot 
know. Perhaps he had been intimately con- 
nected with the real Louis XVII., that elusive 
boy who cannot be found amongst all the two- 
score who claimed his name. This seems, on 
the whole, the most likely supposition. Naun- 
dorff, let us say, was servant or companion to the 
Dauphin after his escape, saw him constantly, 
listened to his reminiscences, picked up his 
mannerisms, and then at some likely moment — 



THE FORTY DAUPHINS 315 

oft the death of Louis XVII. perhaps — assumed 
his master's identity, as he may have done his 
old clothes, and acted so convincingly the part 
of Louis XVII. that, by a masterpiece of im- 
posture, the Prince's old nurse was deceived and 
the government of Louis XVIII. and Louis- 
Philippe affrighted. 

And so, many comedies have risen from this 
great tragedy. To the mind's eye comes a 
grotesque picture — a poor martyred king buried 
namelessly, and above his grave a strange little 
band of knaves and lunatics, quarrelling amongst 
themselves, each raising his voice to shout, 
**I am the Dauphin!" while underneath their 
bickering the Dauphin sleeps in the peace he 
has deserved so well. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 

IT is impossible to deny that the forty would- 
be Dauphins, with all their attendant intrigues 
and absurdities, form one of the principal jokes 
of history. It would be unfair, however, to dis- 
miss with a laugh the Dauphin mystery as a 
whole ; for despite the fact that the twoscore 
self-styled Louis XVI I. s were in all probability 
every one of them impostors of varying degrees 
of turpitude and cleverness, the fact remains 
that the question of the imprisoned Prince's fate 
has an existence and an interest quite apart 
from their activities. 

Had never a single man pretended to be 
Louis XVII., the mystery of his death would 
still have an importance. Indeed, it would have 
perhaps a greater importance than it has now, 
when the historic detective is forced to look 
upon it through a haze of, for the most part, 
farcical and fraudulent pretensions. 

What eventually happened to Louis XVII. is 

a question, to my mind, entirely unanswerable. 

316 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 317 

I do not see him in any of the forty pseudo- 
Dauphins. On the other hand, I do not see him 
in the child who expired on Lasne's bosom, mur- 
muring pathetic words about his mother's voice. 
I am convinced, in short, that the child escaped 
from the Temple, but I have no idea what hap- 
pened to him afterwards. 

Belief in his escape is not founded on any 
of the arguments of the pretenders, but rather 
on the actual events in the history of France 
during the half-century that followed June 8, 
1795- 

''Sometimes," says M. Lanne in his book, 
Louis XVII . et le Secret de la Revolution, "an 
astronomer is able, by observing certain in- 
fluences brought to bear on movements of the 
stars, to deduce the presence of a planet still un- 
seen, to mark its place, to determine its orbit 
and to judge of its weight and volume. By this 
same method some day a future historian, in 
taking account of certain apparent political in- 
consistencies during this period, will deduce with 
equal sureness the existence of some unknown 
factor, and will be able by force of deduction to 
arrive at last at an exact knowledge of what this 
factor was." 

What are these irregularities in the historic 
heavens which may be interpreted to reveal an 
unseen planet, a king cheated of his heritage? 



318 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Of irregularities the history of France shows 
plenty indeed during the unhappy half-century 
that followed the Dauphin's birth and during 
which the troubled country knew half-a-dozen 
rulers and governments (Louis XVI., the Re- 
public, Napoleon, Louis XVIII., Charles X., 
Louis-Philippe). Some of these irregularities 
must seem to the unprejudiced observer to have 
an indubitable connection with the mystery which 
surrounded Louis XVI I. 'send — a mystery which, 
it may be conjectured, was not so mysterious to 
the various governments of the period as it has 
always been to the general public. 

These peculiar circumstances do not commence 
to be seen until the restoration of the Bourbons. 
Napoleon was far too busy conquering Europe to 
trouble himself over the fate of his uncrowned 
predecessor, Louis XVII. In 1814 Napoleon 
fell, and the Bourbons, in the person of the child's 
uncle, Louis XVIII., were returned to power. 
This restoration was arranged by the allied 
powers of Europe. Yet the powers had certainly 
not accepted blindly the unconvincing death- 
certificate of June 1795. In most of the courts 
of Europe it was suspected that the Dauphin had 
not died in the Temple as he was represented to 
have done ; in some of them it was very possibly 
known for a fact that he had escaped. Why, 
then, did they permit and encourage the fraud by 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 319 

which his uncle was allowed to cheat the young 
King of his throne ? 

The Emperor Alexander and the King of 
Prussia, it is said, visited the ex-Empress 
Josephine at the chateau of Malmaison while the 
negotiations were in progress after Napoleon's 
first downfall. 

** Whom shall we put on the throne of France ? " 
they asked her. 

'' The son of Louis XVI., to be sure," was her 
answer. 

When the treaty was drawn up — this circum- 
stance too is more a matter of hearsay than of 
conventional and authenticated history — it con- 
tained a secret article which ran as follows : — 

" Although the allied powers have not the 
material proof of the death of Louis XVI.'s son, 
the situation in Europe and their own political 
interests demand that they should put at the 
head of affairs in France Louis-Xavier, Comte 
de Provence, under the ostensible title of King, 
though he will be considered in their secret trans- 
actions as merely regent of the kingdom for the 
next two years, the powers reserving to them- 
selves meantime the right to seek determining 
evidence on the point which will eventually deter- 
mine to whom belongs the reigning sovereignty 
of France." 

At any rate, whether their feeling was thus 



320 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

formally expressed in the treaty or no, there is 
much evidence to prove that all over Europe 
the belief was common that Louis XVIII. was 
a usurper, and that the French crown really be- 
longed to his long-lost nephew. Even Simien- 
Despreaux, the sentimental historian who was 
amongst the first to recount the supposed 
Dauphin's dying words, was forced to acknow- 
ledge the prevalence of this belief. In 1814, 
when Louis XVIII. had just been called to the 
throne, the rumour spread about Paris, said 
Despr^aux, that Louis XVII., 'Mike another 
Ninias," was living, and that among the signers 
of the treaty of the 23rd April there were those 
who had in their hands proofs of his existence. 

If contemporary gossip is right and the treaty did 
indeed contain a clause by which Louis XVI 1 1. 's 
reign was limited in this way, it was certainly a 
trying situation for the new King. The Comte 
de Provence had waited and longed all his life 
for the crown, and now, at sixty, the reward of 
his passionate ambition was merely to be osten- 
sible king, and that only on sufferance. 

Still, he was on the throne, and despite the 
Damocles' sword that hung over his head, he 
was not, after all, in such a bad position. The 
powers had stipulated for two years' time in which 
to seek out positive evidence about Louis XVI I. 's 
fate; but how, to be sure, were they to seek 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 321 

successfully when this ambitious and unscrupu- 
lous old man stood ready to baulk them at every 
step? His help was needed if the lost Prince 
was to be discovered and identified. We may 
be sure his help was not forthcoming. Indeed, 
as was very natural to a man of his character 
and in his position, he opposed this possible 
identification in every way — even, some say, 
by crime. 

For example : when Josephine died suddenly a 
few weeks after Louis XVI II. 's accession, she was 
believed to have been poisoned, and " all Europe 
named the author of her premature death." 
The ex-Empress, it will be remembered, was 
supposed to have assisted in the Dauphin's 
escape from the Temple. As lately as 1870, 
indeed, the Empress Eugenie stated that it 
had always been a tradition in the Bonaparte 
family that Josephine had conspired for this 
escape, and that her sudden death was due to 
her imprudence in speaking too freely of the 
matter in after years. 

The soft-hearted and romantic Josephine had 
no doubt revelled in the intrigues which centred 
in this ill-used child, and during Napoleon's 
time she used often to speak of the part she 
had played in delivering him. Las Cases, who 
shared Napoleon's exile for a time at St. Helena 
and kept a memorial of what the deposed 

21 



322 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Emperor said and did, states that Josephine 
went even further than this. 

She was alarmed lest, having failed to give 
the great Emperor an heir, he might divorce 
her. " When at last she was forced to give up 
all hope, she often hinted to her husband at a 
possible political remedy for her childlessness." 
This remedy was the adoption by Napoleon of 
the lost Prince to be his heir, and thereby to 
consolidate the old and the new regime. 

Failing in this scheme, Josephine pleaded the 
Dauphin's cause in 1814 before the King of 
Prussia and the Emperor Alexander. The King 
of Prussia made no promises, but Alexander 
undertook to consider the matter. Josephine, 
it may be supposed, was, or fancied herself 
to be, still more or less in touch with the lost 
Prince's movements. 

A few weeks later Josephine died suddenly, and 
though Louis XVIII. was very possibly innocent 
of her death, there were many people then, as now, 
who did not believe him altogether guiltless. 

The supporters of one of the pretenders have 
stated that the Comte de Provence was also 
a party to the intrigue which, twenty years 
before, saved the little King from prison and 
substituted another child to die in his place. 
Provence's motive in this was to kill his 
nephew's chances to the throne by accomplishing 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 323 

the child's death civilly, while really leaving him 
still alive. It may be possible that this is true, 
but it would seem more likely that the Comte 
de Provence, hearing the imprisoned Dauphin 
was moribund, would have left well enough 
.alone, and would have relied upon securing the 
succession he so greatly coveted by means of 
the child's death rather than by complicated and 
dangerous intrigue. 

However this may be, there is no doubt 
that the Comte de Provence must have been 
informed of Louis XVII.'s escape as soon as 
it was accomplished, and that, hearing this 
news, he must have found himself in a difficult 
quandary. How was he to arrange matters 
so that his nephew might never be able to 
deprive him of the crown he so highly valued, 
even in those republican days of 1795, when 
it must have seemed a very shadowy bauble? 

There was a way to manage this. It was 
not a very lofty way, but then the Comte de 
Provence had never been an over-scrupulous 
man, nor one greatly moved by influences of 
family affection. This may readily be seen 
from a letter which he wrote to the Comte 
d'Artois, his younger brother, a week after 
Louis XVI.'s death. 

'* It is all over, my brother, the deed is done," 
he writes. '* I hold in my hands the official 



324 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

assurance of the death of the unhappy Louis 
XVI., and I have barely time to send on the 
news to you. I am also informed that his son 
is dying. In shedding tears for our kinsmen 
we must not forget how useful their deaths 
will be for the State. May this idea console 
you. Remember, also, that the Grand-Prieur, 
your son, is, after me, the hope and heir of 
the monarchy." Did ever cynicism and cold- 
bloodedness flaunt themselves more unashamed ? 
A man who could write unblushingly in this 
tone within a few days of a terrible family 
tragedy could not be expected to show any 
scruples in his dealings with a helpless child. 

Consider his shameful part in the Favras 
conspiracy, where heartlessly he abandoned the 
faithful tool who had ceased to be useful to him. 
Consider his behaviour at the time of the flight 
to Varennes, when, it has been hinted plainly 
enough, he betrayed his brother's plans to 
Lafayette and escaped himself safely to Brussels 
while the King was ignominiously trapped at 
the frontier. Once safely a refugee, the Comte 
de Provence did nothing to improve the position 
of his unhappy brother. 

"His greatest grief has been all his life that 
he was not born the master," wrote Marie- Antoi- 
nette to the Princesse de Lamballe, in a letter 
which she bade her burn, but which the Princess 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOAUD 325 

kept until the day of her death, when, at the 
first blow that fell upon her, it dropped from her 
head-dress stained with blood. '* This passionate 
wish to reign has only increased in him since our 
misfortunes have given him a chance to interfere 
and to thrust himself forward." 

Talleyrand once said of him, *' Monsieur is 
wicked. He cares only for himself. He wants 
the crown. His brother is in his way. It is not 
impossible he may get rid of him." A few years 
later, it was the nephew who was in his way, and 
Provence's impulse was to get rid of him as well. 
It may be supposed that his first thought was to 
accomplish the child's assassination, and that, for 
some reasons failing in this, he set himself to so 
arrange matters that Louis XVII.'s claims to the 
throne could never be recognised. 

Anticipating that one day the Bourbons would 
return to power, and that, in default of direct heir 
to Louis XVI., he himself would be king, anti- 
cipating also the probability that Louis XVII. 
would then, if not before, come forward to 
demand his rights, Provence conceived the 
fiendishly ingenious idea of muzzling that person 
to whom Louis XVII. would be certain to make 
his first appeal for recognition, and whose de- 
cision on his identity would carry the greatest 
weight — that was, of course, the sister of the 
Prince, who had shared his captivity. 



326 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

*' Remember," he had written to the Comte 
d'Artois, **that your son is, after me, the hope 
and heir of the monarchy." To no one, then, 
could the recognition of Louis XVI I. 's identity 
be a more unwelcome event than to this son, the 
Due dAngouleme, since it would deprive him 
entirely of rights of succession. What better 
way could be thought of to silence Madame 
Royale for ever than to join the destinies of 
these two young cousins — one who had every- 
thing to fear from a recognition of Louis XVII. ; 
the other, she who of all persons stood most 
fitted to make this recognition ."^ 

It was a master-stroke, so simple and yet so 
inevitably fated to gain success for the uncle's 
plans. Before Madame Royale was even freed 
from her imprisonment at the Temple, the Comte 
de Provence had set about arranging the mar- 
riage, and had commissioned Madame de Tourzel 
to see the captive Princess and tell her how 
much he desired the marriage. In 1799 the 
ceremony took place, and as he witnessed it, the 
Comte de Provence must have smiled to himself 
at the thought that he had for ever silenced the 
person whose betrayal he had most to fear. 

The new Duchesse dAngouleme held the hope 
of becoming eventually the Queen of France, and 
of bearing a son who would in his turn be king. 
Was it to be supposed that she would forfeit 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 327 

all this for the sake of a brother whom she had 
not seen since he was eight, and who had, more- 
over, been represented to her as having been 
entirely brutalised and debauched by the cruelty 
of his treatment at the Temple? "When we 
have seen broils between brothers and sisters 
for a few paltry franc-pieces, we can only laugh 
at the possibility of a cold-hearted woman like 
the Duchesse d'Angoul^me hesitating for a 
moment between the calls of family affection 
and the prospect of the finest throne in the 
world." 1 

Cold-hearted, the Duchesse d'Angouleme cer- 
tainly was. Napoleon, in a well-known scornful 
reference to the Bourbons, dubbed her **the only 
man in the family." In her childhood she had 
been sober and unsmiling ; in maturity she 
carried an expression in her eyes that, accord- 
ing to one who knew her, struck cold all who 
looked at her. It has been said also that 
there is no historic figure more enigmatic than 
she ; but surely, when we consider the skeleton 
that stood in the Bourbon cupboard, no woman 
ever stood in a stranger and more trying position. 

Conventionally a good woman and one who 
liked the self-flattery of an easy conscience, it 
must indeed have been difficult for her to shut 
her ears to the voice of duty, to decline to help 

•^ Henri Provins in Le Camet^ November 1903. 



328 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

in clearing the mystery of her brother's fate 
and in restoring his rights to him. Very likely 
she had some idea where he was, and as she 
stood at the right hand of her uncle's throne, 
the thought must often have stabbed her con- 
science that the man to whom this throne 
honestly belonged was a nameless outcast, and 
that it was her selfishness primarily which had 
cheated him. 

It is no wonder that many things in her life 
are curious and inconsistent. In the end, if we 
may believe a story which has come to us rather 
round-aboutly, she repented, and would have 
wished to make up for a lifetime's deception. 
The incident was recounted by General La 
Roche Jacquelein. ** Madame," said he, " called 
me to her death-bed and said to me in a voice 
that was almost inaudible, * General, I have a 
fact, a very solemn fact to reveal to you. It 
is the testament of a dying woman. My 
brother is not dead ; it has been the nightmare 
of my life. . . . Promise me to take the neces- 
sary steps to trace him. See the Pope ; see 
Martin's children ; travel the whole world over 
to find some old servants or their descendants, 
for France will not be happy nor at peace till 
he is on the throne of his fathers.' " 

Such, then, was the position of the reigning 
family of France towards him who should have 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 329 

been their king : the Duchesse d'Angoul^me 
miserably silenced by self-interest, Louis XVIII. 
cleverly scheming, suppressing from the archives 
documentary evidence which bore upon the fate 
of his nephew, encouraging the pathetic story 
of the Dauphin's death in the Temple, and 
surreptitiously bringing forward pretended Louis 
XVI I.s, so that, by the easy overthrowing of 
their claims, his police might cast discredit on 
the possibility of the escape and might make 
the whole subject ridiculous. It was a position 
full of embarrassment for all concerned, but 
Louis XVIII. probably thought the incon- 
veniences well offset by the crown he had 
gained. There is a certain poetical justice in 
the fact that the Duchesse d'Angouleme never 
profited by her deceptions, and died childless 
in exile. 

One of the greatest embarrassments with 
which the royal family met was in connection 
with the commemoration of the pretended death 
of Louis XVII. Naturally it was difficult to 
feel an impulse of enthusiasm toward the cele- 
brating of Masses, the erecting of monuments, 
and the conducting of other formal commemo- 
rative rites for a person who they knew, or at any 
rate suspected, was not dead at all. The boy's 
sister, indeed, committed rather a faux pas in 
her innocence, and omitted both at the Temple 



330 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

and when she first reached Vienna after her 
liberation to put on mourning for the brother who 
even then she doubtless realised was living. 

Louis XVI I L himself would never have made 
such a mistake. It is probable that after the 
restoration he would even have procured a 
skeleton of suitable size and would have had 
it buried with due pomp, had it not been that 
he feared lest by some ill chance Louis XVII. 
might one day be able to prove his rights. 
Should such a misadventure occur, it would of 
course put Louis XVIII. in a very awkward 
position had he previously conducted the funeral 
of a mock Dauphin. Another reason which 
might explain Louis XVI 1 1. 's action is that the 
Church of Rome, which it is supposed shared 
the general suspicion that the Dauphin still lived, 
required, before permitting a funeral service to 
be held, fuller proof of the death than Louis 
XVIII. could offer. It seemed, therefore, more 
politic to leave Louis XVII. tombless. 

Again and again the public was astonished 
by deliberate failures to honour in some way 
the memory of the supposedly dead child-king. 
Plans were made to hold a solemn service in 
the basilica of Saint-Denis in Louis XVI I. 's 
memory, but the plans were not carried out. 

In January 1816 the House of Peers and 
the House of Deputies voted unanimously in 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 331 

favour of erecting, in the name and at the 
expense of the nation, a monument in expiation 
of the crime of January 21, 1793 (Louis XVI.'s 
execution), and a monument to the memory 
of Louis XVII., of Queen Marie- Antoinette, and 
of Madame EHsabeth. It was decided to place 
these monuments in the Church of the Madeleine. 
Everything appeared to be arranged satisfactorily; 
M. Lemot, a distinguished sculptor, was charged 
with the execution of a mausoleum to Louis XVII., 
and M. Belloc composed an inscription for it : — 

TO THE MEMORY 

OF 

LOUIS XVII. 

WHO, 

AFTER HAVING SEEN HIS ILLUSTRIOUS PARENTS 

REMOVED BY A DEATH 

WHICH SORROW SHRINKS FROM RECALLING, 

AND HAVING DRAINED TO THE DREGS 

THE CUP OF SUFFERING, 

WAS, WHILE STILL YOUNG 

AND BUT ON THE THRESHOLD OF LIFE, 

CUT DOWN BY DEATH. 

HE DIED ON VIII. JUNE MDCCLXXXXV. 

AGED X YEARS II MONTHS AND XII DAYS 

But again plans were changed. For no 
ostensible reason the monument to Louis XVII. 
was not erected. The commemorative honours 



332 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

were restricted to the three other victims of 
the Revolution tragedy, and all mention what- 
soever of Louis XVII. was excluded. 

Even more strange was the behaviour of 
the royal family when M. Lemercier, the curd 
of Sainte-Marguerite, made a formal proposal 
to the Duchesse d'Angouleme that the remains 
which he believed to be those of Louis XVII. 
should be exhumed and placed in a special 
chapel of his church. 

The Duchesse cried a great deal, but declined 
her consent to any exhumation. 

** We must be careful," said she, ** not to 
awaken the memory of civil discords. Kings 
are in a terrible position, and cannot do all 
that they would wish." This is a creditable 
sentiment, but one which loses all its force 
when we recollect that monuments were erected 
to Louis XVI. and his Queen — an act which 
would far more readily have aroused dangerous 
memories than could the putting up of memorials 
intended merely to do honour to an innocent 
child. 

Again in the matter of that grisly relic, the 
heart of the child of the Temple, the royal 
attitude was curiously equivocal. At the time 
of the autopsy in 1795 Palletan, one of the 
officiating doctors, conceived the ghastly idea 
of abstracting the heart of the child as a sort 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 333 

of souvenir. Seizing advantage of a moment 
when his colleagues were consulting together at 
a distance, Palletan carried out his design. 

'* I wrapped the heart in a bit of linen and 
slipped it unnoticed into my pocket. When I 
got home I put the heart in a jar full of spirits 
of wine, and hid it behind the books on the 
top shelf in my library." 

After the restoration, Palletan offered this 
relic to the Dauphin's family. At first, orders 
were given that it should be accepted and be 
preserved with honour at Saint- Denis. No 
doubt appeared to be felt that the heart in 
question was really that of the Temple child. 
Yet, for no explained reason, Palletan was in 
the end left with the relic on his hands, a snub 
which he deeply resented. Several years after 
he renewed his offer, making it this time to 
the Duchesse dAngouleme, and, through the 
Archbishop of Paris, presenting the heart to 
her in a silver and crystal casket. 

The Duchesse looked at it unmoved, and 
declined the gift. 

Such behaviour seemed unnatural. Equally 
peculiar was her conduct to Madame de Ram- 
baud, who, it will be remembered, had been 
nurse to the Dauphin in his infancy, and who 
had in her old age fancied she had recognised 
him in the person of Naundorff. Madame de 



334 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

Rambaud, for the sake of championing his 
cause, attempted to approach the Duchesse 
when she was at Prague. The latter replied 
through a third person that **she knows 
Madame de Rambaud, who was, more than forty 
years ago, the attendant of the Dauphin, and 
that, not thinking it possible that a person of 
her age could have undertaken so fatiguing 
a journey, she has no reason for seeing the 
person of that name whom you have brought 
hither." 

The Duchesse d'Angouleme's conduct was 
pronounced by Naundorff's friends to be disin- 
genuous, and their pronouncement seems just. 
The Duchesse's pretence that it was not the 
true Madame de Rambaud who had come to 
Prague is unconvincing. Moreover, had she 
really doubted that this was indeed Madame de 
Rambaud, what easier method could have been 
found of discovering the truth than to see the 
lady and ask her a question or two about the 
old life at Versailles ? By seeing her the 
Duchesse, had she been certain of the Dauphin's 
death, would have risked nothing. By declining 
to see her, she risked the suspicion that she was 
afraid of hearing something which Madame de 
Rambaud might reveal. 

Persons with special information as to the 
Dauphin's fate were not popular at Louis XVI 1 1, s 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 335 

court. We have seen that contemporary rumour 
set down the ex-Empress Josephine's premature 
death to the fact that she knew too much about 
this dangerous subject. Caron is another sup- 
posed victim to his own too great knowledge. 

He had, years before, been connected with 
the household of Louis XVI., and when the 
royal family moved to the Temple he had 
accompanied them as a servant. During his 
service there he had seen the Dauphin often, 
and had helped to soften the unhappy little 
prisoner's fate. It was thus that he chanced to 
gain much information about the mystery of 
the Temple. After the restoration the Duchesse 
dAngouleme, who had not forgotten his faithful- 
ness, gave Caron a pension. 

A little time after this, Louis XVIII. sum- 
moned Caron to him and questioned him. 
Caron, with a pitiful simplicity, supposed that 
the King would be pleased to hear of his 
nephew's escape, and so told him frankly all that 
he knew. Presently, on the 4th March 1820, 
Caron left his home at one in the afternoon to 
go to call on his daughter, and said he would 
come back at once. He never returned. 

His family sought him everywhere, and made 
wide investigations to no purpose. One day his 
son was warned by a stranger in a cafd that 
it would be best for him to cease investigating 



336 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

the matter. Nothing more was ever heard of 
Caron pere. 

Of all the royal family the Due de Berry, 
younger brother of the Due d'Angouleme, was 
the only person who appears to have felt any 
serious qualms beeause of the dishonourable 
fashion in whieh Louis XVII. was being eheated 
of his birthright. This was perhaps natural, 
for the Due de Berry was, aecording to the 
Comtesse de Boigne, the only person of his 
family who felt any real patriotism, the rest 
being unmitigatedly selfish. 

In 1820 this Prinee became so mueh interested 
in the fate of Louis XVII. that he approached 
his unele on the subject. From several sources, 
such as the testimony of a gentleman usher 
who overheard it, come accounts of their stormy 
interview. 

The Due de Berry commenced by saying that 
Louis XVII. was not dead. 

This Louis XVIII. denied, but the Due de 
Berry stood firm in his declaration. 

Then Louis XVIII. shifted about and reminded 
his nephew of the very practical consideration 
that it was to his own advantage to keep Louis 
XVII. unrecognised, since he. Berry, would in 
this case one day inherit the throne. 

" My uncle, let us be honest before every- 
thing ! " cried the Due de Berry. 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 337 

And Louis XVIII. exclaimed angrily, ''Sir, 
leave the room ! " 

This took place only a few days before the 
Due de Berry's assassination. This crime, fol- 
lowing so closely on the interview in question, 
has sometimes been attributed — though of the 
truth of the supposition there is in this case 
the scantiest proof — like the death of Josephine 
and the disappearance of Caron, to the fact of 
the victim's dangerous knowledge about the fate 
of Louis XVII. 

However, these assassinations and disappear- 
ances are uncertain ground on which to build 
up theories. Far more seriously important is 
the peculiar fact that Louis XVII. was left so 
pointedly without tomb and commemoration, and 
that while some forty men were attempting to 
prove that the little King had survived, no formal 
seal was ever set by tomb and epitaph on the 
official statement that he was dead. Surely, 
had every other circumstance in connection with 
his supposed death been perfectly regular, this 
strange omission would by itself have been 
enough to arouse suspicion and to suggest the 
possibility that the whole of Louis XVI I. 's story 
was not told when the signatures were set to 
the death- certificate of June 1795. 

But if the real Louis XVII. was not the hero 
of the Temple tragedy, nor yet of one of the 



338 THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 

forty farces of the pretenders, where are we 
to look for him during all this time ? While 
his sister and uncle were weeping crocodile tears 
for him, and a crowd of youths were laying 
claim to his identity, where was the true Louis- 
Charles ? 

It is an unanswerable question. Two supposi- 
tions — they can be no more than that — are ten- 
able : one that the boy died soon after his escape 
and when still a child ; the other that he survived 
for a life of obscurity, too broken in body and 
mind to attempt to reclaim his rights. Nearer 
than this we cannot come to the real truth. His 
life, one of the saddest and strangest that ever 
we have known of, must remain, as far as history 
is concerned, a story without an end. Some 
day papers may come to light in the archives 
of some European royal house that will write 
the last chapter of his mystery and set a ** Finis" 
beneath this strangely inconclusive story. Till 
then we may only wonder and guess. 

As Due de Normandie we have seen him 
at Versailles, cradled in the arms of the most 
fascinating woman of her time. As Dauphin 
of France we have seen him reviewing his 
child regiment in Paris. As Louis XVH., the 
seven-year-old king, in the Temple, we have 
seen him inherit the crown of the Bourbons 
and all their misfortunes. But how and where 



SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD 339 

and under what name he ended we can never 
tell. 

Poor Louis-Charles! He was born in magni- 
ficence ; he was brought up in the midst of a 
great tragedy ; and he died — none knows where 
nor how. 



INDEX 



Abridged Account oj Misfortunes 

of the Dauphhi^ 313 
Adelaide, Madame, 52 
Agout, M. d', 67 
Alexander, Emperor, 222, 319 
Angouleme, Due d', 326 
Duchesse d' {^see Royale, 

Madame) 
Artois, Comte d', 7, 9, 14, 124, 323, 

326 
Assembly and Louis XVI., 1 18-9 
Atkyns, Mrs., 181, 254-5 
Avaux, Abb^ d', 19, 90 

Bailly, 39 

Barbey, Frederic, 219, 225 

Barelle, 212-3 

Barnave, 78-79 

Barras, 221, 230-2, 256-9 

Barre, Gruau de la, 309 

Barry, Madame du, 5 

Bastille, 15, 27-28, 30, 48, 53 

Batz, Baron de, 180-1 

Batz^ Le Baron de, 187 

Beauchesne, M. de, 23, 144, 200-1, 

219 
Beauharnais, Josephine de {see 

Josephine) 
Belloc, M., 331 
Berry, Due de, 301, 336-7 
Biet, Baron Georges de, lOi 
Billaud-Varenne, 225-6 
Bimbenet, M., 66 
22* 



Boigne, Comtesse de, 336 

Bondy, 67 

Boucher, 187 

Bouille, Marquis de, 60, 74-75 

Brun, Madame Le, 3, 19, 23 

Bruneau, Mathurin, 271, 274-80, 

300 
Brunier, 185 

Bulletin of the Sociiti d^ etudes sur 
la question Louis XVI I.^ loi 

CAMBACfeRfes, 236 

Campan, Madame, 11, 24, 42, 79, 

93-94 

Canaries, Conspiracy of the, 214-5 

Capet, Louis {see Louis XVI.) 

Captivite et Mort de Marie- Antoi- 
nette, 36 

Carlyle, Thomas, 168, 206 

Carnation Conspiracy, 180 

Carnet, Le, 327 

Caron, 335-6 

Cases, Las, 321 

Catharine II. of Russia, 167 

Chaintrix, 69 

Chalons, 69, 76 

Champ de Mars, 48 

Chantelauze, M., 200, 219, 251 

Chaumette, 197, 205 

Choiseul, Due de, 60, 70-71, 74 

Cimetih'e de la Madeleine, 273, 277 

Civil List suppressed, 121 

Claye, 80 



342 



THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 



Clergy, veto on, 102 

Clery, 132, 138, 141, 146, 148, 151-2, 

155-9, 172, 195, 222 
Clouet, 212 

Conde, Prince de, 167, 270, 293 
Constitution, new, 88-89 
Croker, 67, 81, 113 

Danton, 188, 225 
Daujon, 36, 207 
Dauphin-Dragon Regiment, 51 
Desault, 242-3, 249-51, 261 
Diamond Necklace intrigue, 12, 15 
Dillon, General, 189 
Doctrine Celeste, 308, 313 
Dormans, 77, 80 
Drame de Varennes, 60 
Drouet (Postmaster), 150, 199 

(National Guard), 112 

Duchesne {see Hebert) 
Dumangin, 244-5 
Dumas, Alexandre, 15 

EiNERS, Mdlle. J., 300 
Elisabeth, Madame, 13, 19, 62, 68 
79, 85, 106, III, 117, 122, 128, 

131. 137, 139, 147, 151, 154, 
159, 169, 182-3, 194, 203, 
206-9, 224-5, 228, 331 

Epernay, 77-78 

Essays on French Revolution^ 67 

Eugenie, Empress, 321 

European Magazine^ 247-52 

Famine, 32-33, 187-8 

Favras, 324 

Favre, Jules, 309 

Federation, the, 48-49 

Fersen, Count Axel de, 60, 64-65, 

67-68 
Feuillants, Convent of Les, 122-5 
" Fifty Days, The," 113-21 



Filial Piety ^ 172 

" First Public Functionary," 53 

" First Substitute," 53 

Flanders Regiment, 32-33 

Fleurieu, M. de, 92-93 

Fontaine, La, 91 

Fontainebleau, 4 

France, Anatole, 299 

Friedrichs, Otto, 299 

Fro77i Monarchy to Republic in 

France, 49 
Fulgence, M., 283 

Gallardon, Martin de {see Martin) 

Gaulot, Paul, 177 

Gomin, 233-5, 238, 240, 242, 245, 

252-4 
Greve, Place de, 13 
Gueriviere, Morin de, 270 
Goncourt, MM, de, 19 

Hamm, 166 

Hanson, Rev. John, 289, 291 

Harmand, 238-9 

Hebert, 204-5, 208, 225-6 

Hervegault, 271-4 

Histoire de Marie- Antoinette , 20 

Hue, M., 38, 81, 105, 108, 112, 125, 

130, 134, 138-9 
Hugo, Victor, 71 

Iroquois Chief {see Williams) 
Iscariot of France, The, 9 

Jacquelin, General La Roche, 

328 
Jarjayes, Chev. de, 174-81, 183 
Jean IH., 284, 310 
Joinville, Prince de, 286-90 
Josephine de Beauharnais, 256, 

258-9, 292, 319, 321-2, 335 
June 20th incident, 102-4 



INDEX 



343 



Knights Templars, 126 
Korff, Madame de, 68 

Lafayette, 64 

La Legitimite, 298 

Lamballe, Princess de, 36, 122, 
125, 134-5, 324-5 

Lange, Mdlle. S. de, 284 

Lanne, M., 317 

Lasne, 240-5, 252-4 

Last Days of Marie- Antoinette ^ 
128, 195 

Laurent, 232-5, 240 

Lawson, P. V., 291-2 

Lemercier, M., 332 

Lemot, M., 331 

Len6tre, 36, 55, 60, 68, 73, 128, 
187, 195 

Lepitre, 171-2, 177-80 

Louis XIV., 40, 125 

Louis XV., 2-5, 269-70 

Louis XVL, 1-2, 15, 18, 25, 30-32, 
37-38, 42, 47-48, 54-58, 74, 84, 
88, 98-100, 117, 122-5, 142, 
150, 155-63 

Louis XVII., birth, 1 1-12 ; christen- 
ing, 12-13; youth, education, 
and character, 16-22 ; women's 
revolt, 36-37 ; Louis in Paris, 
38-42 ; at the Tuileries, 42-46 ; 
education at Tuileries, 90-93 ; 
qualities, 95-98 ; separated from 
his parents, 144-6 ; thought- 
fulness, 152-4; vow to his 
father, 162-3 ; accession of, 
166-7; importance, 173-4; 
plots for his release, 174-84; 
illness, 185-6 ; events in Paris, 
186-7 ; Simon and his cruelty, 
192-212 ; Barelle, 212-3 5 i'^- 
cident of the canaries, 214-5 ; 
mystery of the Temple, 218-9 ; 



the Temple in 1794, 223-7 ; 
Barras and Laurent and Gomin, 
230-4 ; proposals of banish- 
ment, 236 ; illness and death, 
237-45 ; doubts as to manner 
of death, 246-53 ; burial-place, 
253-5; stories of supposed 
escape, 258-67 ; pretenders, 
268-315 ; mystery of Louis's 
death, 316-9; successor, 
319-24; monument, 330-1; 
the heart relic, 332-4; more 
suppositions as to his death, 

334-9 
Louis XVII. et le Secret de la 

Revolution, 317 
Louis XVIII. {see Provence, Comte 

de) 
Louis Joseph Xavier Frangois, 9, 

16-17, 25-26 
Luxembourg, 124 

MacLehoes, Miss, 49 

Maria Theresa, 16 

Marie-Antoinette, description of, 
1-5 ; intrigues against, 6-7 ; 
birth of two children, 7-8 ; 
people's hatred, 9-1 1 ; birth of 
the Little Dauphin, 11-14; 
motherhood, 15-16; birth of a 
second Princess, 16; youth of 
the children, 17-19; letter to 
de Goncourt, 20-21 ; dislike by 
France, 25 ; King in Paris, 
31; women's revolt, 34-38; 
Paris, 38-40 ; the Tuileries, 
42-44 ; Chalons, 76-77 ; im- 
prisonment, 85 ; the mob, 
107-10; August loth, 1 16-7; 
at the Convent, 122-4; at the 
Temple, 125-7 ; trial of the 
King, 155-7 ; sentence and 



344 



THE LITTLE DAUPHIN 



death, 162-5 > desolation, 
170-1 ; Toulan, 175-7 ; treat- 
ment of Louis XVII., 189-90 ; 
Simon, 192-3 ; Drouet, 199 ; 
sees her son, 203-4 ; charges, 
trial, and death, 206-9 > monu- 
ment, 331 

Marie Therese Charlotte (^^^ Royale) 

Martin, Thos. Ignace, 302-3, 313, 
328 

Medici, Venus de, 3 

Meudon, 230 

Meves, Augustus, 280-3, 308 

Monaco, Prince of, 272 

Montmedy, 57, 70 

Montreuil, 154 

" Mother of First Substitute," 53 

Moufflet, 22-23 

" Mousseline la Serieuse," 94 

Mystery of the Temple, 218-9 

Naples, Queen of, 12 
Napoleon, 318, 321-2, 327 
National Convention, visit to Louis 

XVI., 149-50 

National Guard, 11 1-2 
Naundorff, 258-62, 264, 271, 284, 

294-5, 208-313, 333 
Normandie, Due de {see Louis 

XVIL) 
Nouvelle Revue, 52 

Onwarenhiiaki {see Williams) 

Palletan, 224-5, 332-3 
Palloi, 53 

Pamphlets, libellous, 9-10 
Pauline de Tourzel, 86-87, 120, 125 
Petion, 79 
Petite Ecurie, 26 

Plots to release Louis XVIL, 
174-84, 188-9 



Polignac, Duchesse de, 17-18, 

28-29, 93 
Pompadour, Madame de, 93 
Pont-de-Pomme-Vesle, 69-70, 74 
Pretenders to title of Louis XVIL, 

268-315 
Private Life of Marie- Antoinette y 

42 
Proclamation of Louis XVIL, 

169 
Provence, Comte de, 7-8, 12, 

31-32, 44, 62, 98, 166-7, 

255-6, 257-9, 318-20, 322, 

323-36 
Provins, Henri, 219, 327 
Prussia, King of, 319, 322 
Putnam's Magazine, 289 

Question ifnportante sur la Mort 
de Louis XVIL, 247 

Rambaud, Madame de, 299, 312, 
314, 333-4 

Red Cap of Liberty, i lo-i i 

Regnault-Warin, 273 

Republic proclaimed, 140 

Revolt of June 20th, 102- 11 

Revolution, eve of, 26-^27 ; famine 
and revolt, 32-33 ; execution of 
the King, 163 ; guillotine at 
work, 224-5 

Revue Historique de la Question 
Louis XVIL, 208 

Richemont, 262-4, 271, 283, 292-7 

Robespierre, 92, 217, 225, 229-30 

Roederer, 117 

Rohan, Cardinal de, 12 

Royale, Madame, 16, 61-63, 7i. 78, 
88, 94, 108, 122, 132, 135, 
142, 151, 159-64, 169, 182-6, 
193-4, 203, 206-7, 224-5, 
228-31, 240, 252-3, 278, 283, 



INDEX 



345 



300-1, 312, 314, 326-9, 
332-5 

Royalty abolished, 140-2 

St. Cloud, 25, 50, 54, 57, 198 

St. Denis, 33^, 333 

Sainte-Menehould, 70 

Sauce, 73 

Sicotiere, M. de la, 279-80 

Sieyes, Triumvir, 248-9 

Simon, M. and Madame, 169, i8i, 

191-211,215-8, 221, 231-2, 

262-7, 292-3 
Sou (of 1792), loi 
States-General, 15, 25 
Strasbourg, 260-1 
Sutherland, Countess of, 123 
Sweden, King of, 95 
Swiss soldiers, 95 

Taine, 104, 117, 168 

Talleyrand, 325 

Temple, prisoner of, 83-84 ; re- 
sidence at, 125-43 ; Temple 
tower, 145-74; mystery of, 
218-9; alteration of regime, 
222-3 ; further mystery, 243 

Tennis Court, oath of, 102 

Tiers fetat, 260 

Times, the, 268, 281 



Tison, M. and Madame, 78, 182-4 

Toulan, 175-81, 183 

Tourzel, Marquise de, 28-29, 35> 37. 
40, 46-47, 51-52, 55,62,64-68, 
77-78, 86-87, 89, 95, 108, 
114, 122-7, 133, 233, 241, 
326 

Trianon, n, 34 

Tuileries, 40-41, 50, 82 

Massacre at, 11 9-21 

Turgy, 137-8, 159, 169, 177-8 

Turquan, Joseph, 266 

Varennes, flight to, 57-75; re- 
turn from, 76-82 

Vendee, Proclamation at La, 167, 
273 

Venus de Medici, 3 

Versailles, i, 9, 11-12, 22, 25, 30, 
33-34 

Vezin, Baron de, 275-6 

Victoire, Madame, 52 

Vienna, 330 

Ville, Hotel de, 39 

Walpole, Robert, 255 
Weber, 105 

Well of Louis XVL, 160 
Williams, Eleazar, 284-92 
Women at Versailles, 33-36 



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